



> 



++ A* , 













. 






r ^ , 






"4 









A ' * ' 

v 



ii T * 












^ / 



*L, A^ 






.9 «. ' " " 
a"* 















^ 






< 



% 



X ^ 



' 









.0*. 






^ -n*.. 



-/> 






«* ^ 



V 



. 



<?%. 






C* 



"> 






\* 



o5 'O 



V 



v 


















1 



c 



^ 



,00. 






7s jP 

4 



J- Y 















•f 
















a- * y 



S A 



^ ^ 







THE 
MODERN DRAMA 

An Essay in Interpretation 



BY 

LUDWIG LEWISOHN, A.M., Litt.D. 

Professor in the Ohio State University 




NEW YORK 

B. W. HUEBSCH 

MCMXV 






Copyright, I915, by 
B. W. HUEBSCH 



Printed in U. S. A. 



KAY -4 1915 



TO MY WIFE 



Im Grunde bleibt kein realer Gegenstand 
unpoetisch, sobald der Dichter ihn geh'orig 
%u gebrauchen weiss. 

GOETHE, 



il52~.\*x+> 



MAY -4 1915 

©CU397851 

•** /• 



PREFACE 

With a few honourable exceptions books about 
books are apt, at present in America, to be any- 
thing but critical. An account of the modern 
drama, therefore, that aims at historical orderliness 
and intellectual coherence need not, perhaps, offer 
an excuse for its existence. My study is not one 
of phases or aspects but of the whole subject which 
I have attempted to grasp and to interpret as a 
whole. If I have succeeded in any measure, this 
volume should prove of real usefulness to students, 
teachers and critics of the drama. 

I have omitted any discussion of the theatre 
of Italy and Spain. No criticism can be fruitful 
which is not based on an intimate acquaintance 
with the idiom which that literature employs. 
But this omission represents no absolute loss. 
Italy and Spain have followed and exemplified the 
tendencies and methods of the modern theatre. 
They have neither changed them nor originated 
others. 

With the exception of a few lines from The 



PREFACE 

Sunken Bell, the translations of all quotations, in 
verse and prose, are my own. 

This volume has been written amid the press- 
ing tasks of a busy teacher and editor. It owes 
the possibility of its existence largely to the 
friendly interest shown me by Mr. Julius Rosen- 
wald of Chicago. 

Ludwig Lewisohn. 
Columbus, O., 

February, 1915. 



CONTENTS 

PREFACE 

CHAPTER ONE 

THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE 
MODERN DRAMA 

PAGE 

I The New Conception of Tragedy . . 1 

II The Scandinavian Theatre .... 7 

a) Henrik Ibsen 

b) Bjornstjerne Bjornson 

c) August Strindberg 

III Plays of the French Novelists ... 33 

a) The Goncourt Brothers 

b) fimile Zola 

c) Daudet and de Maupassant 

IV Henri Becque 39 

V The New Stages 44 

a) Theatre Libre 

b) Freie Biihne 

CHAPTER TWO 

THE REALISTIC DRAMA IN FRANCE 

I The Development of the French The- 
atre 47 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

II The Psychologists 52 

a) Georges de Porto-Riche 

b) Frangois de Curel 

III French Comedy 63 

Henri Lavedan 

IV The Sociologists 70 

a) Eugene Brieux 

b) Paul Hervieu 

V The Humanists 90 

a) Jules Lemaitre 

b) Maurice Donnay 

VI The Failure of the French Theatre . 100 

CHAPTER THREE 

THE NATURALISTIC DRAMA IN GERMANY 

I The Rise of Naturalism . . . t .103 
II Gerhart Hauptmann 110 

III The Drama of Compromise . . . . 128 

Hermann Sudermann 

IV The School of Hauptmann . . . .134 

a) Max Halbe 

b) Max Dreyer 

c) Georg Hirschfeld 

V Revolutionists in the Drama .... 146 

a) Otto Erich Hartleben 

b) Frank Wedekind 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

VI Naturalistic Humanism 154 

Arthur Schnitzler 

VII Naturalism Once More 163 

CHAPTER FOUR 
THE RENAISSANCE OF THE ENGLISH DRAMA 

I The Conditions of the English Theatre 166 

II Playwrights of the Transition „ . .174 

a) Henry Arthur Jones 

b) Arthur Wing Pinero 

III Artificial Comedy *. 189 

Oscar Wilde 

IV The Culmination of Intellectual 

Comedy 192 

George Bernard Shaw 

V The English Naturalists 202 

a) Granville Barker 

b) John Galsworthy 

VI The Future of the English Theatre . 218 

CHAPTER FIVE 

THE NEO-ROMANTIC MOVEMENT IN THE 
MODERN DRAMA 

I The Theory of Neo-Romanticism . . 220 

II Maurice Maeterlinck 228 

III Edmond Rostand 236 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

IV The German Movement 247 

a) Gerhart Hauptmann 

b) Hugo von Hofmannsthal 

V The Irish Movement 265 

a) William Butler Yeats 

b) Lady Gregory 

c) John Millington Synge. 

VI The Achievement of Neo-Romanticism . 274 
Study Lists 279 

CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE 

MODERN DRAMA .... 289 

Index 327 



THE MODERN DRAMA 



CHAPTER ONE 

THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE MODERN 
DRAMA 



The dramatic literature of the last three dec- 
ades, which it is the purpose of these pages to de- 
scribe and to interpret, may be called the mod- 
ern drama in no loose or inaccurate sense. In all 
ages the drama, through its portrayal of the acting 
and suffering spirit of man, has been more closely 
allied than any other art to his deeper thoughts 
concerning his nature and his destiny. When, 
therefore, during the third quarter of the nine- 
teenth century, these thoughts underwent a pro- 
found and radical change, it was inevitable that 
this change should be communicated to the drama 
and should reshape its content, its technique and 

its aim. The result is that art of the theatre for 

l 



2 THE MODERN DRAMA 

which modern is the briefest and most conven- 
ient term. 

Traditionally the serious drama deals with the 
transgression of an immutable moral law by a 
self -originating will. The tragic action began 
with or, more usually, rose toward the incurring 
of that tragic guilt, and ended with the protag- 
onist's expiation of his transgression. Thence re- 
sulted the triple effect of tragedy: The compas- 
sion aroused for human frailty, the warning 
addressed to the equal frailty of our own wills, 
and the vindication of the moral order native to 
the spectator in that age and country in which 
the tragedy was produced. 

This account of the nature of the historic 
drama is, essentially, the Aristotelian one. It de- 
scribes, however, not only (Edipus the King or 
the conscious imitations of the Attic stage, but 
with equal exactness the great Shakespearean 
tragedies, Othello, Macbeth, Lear, and such later 
and inferior but still authentic examples of trag- 
edy as Schiller's Wallenstein. In each instance, 
in the words of the Sophoclean chorus: 

"All-seeing Time hath caught 
Guilt, and to justice brought;" 

in each instance the poet is conscious of an abso- 



THE FOUNDATIONS 3 

lute moral order affronted by the will of man; 
in each instance the destruction of the protagonist 
reconciles the spectator to a universe in which 
guilt is punished and justice is upheld. 

The free scientific and philosophical inquiry of 
the later nineteenth century, however, rendered 
the traditional principles of tragedy wholly ar- 
chaic. It became clear that the self-originating 
element in human action is small. The individ- 
ual acts in harmony with his character, which is 
largely the result of complex and uncontrollable 
causes. It became even clearer that among the 
totality of moral values an absolute validity can 
be assigned to a few only. Hence the basic con- 
ception of tragic guilt was undermined from 
within and from without. The transgression of 
an immutable moral law by a self-originating will 
was seen to be an essentially meaningless concep- 
tion, since neither an eternally changeless moral 
law nor an uncaused volition is to be found in 
the universe that we perceive. 

Thus the emphasis of the drama was shifted 
from what men do to what they suffer. A ques- 
tioning attitude exercised itself upon nature and 
upon society. Tragedy was seen to arise not 
from the frailty or rebellion of a corrupted will 
defying the changeless moral order, but from the 



4 THE MODERN DRAMA 

pressure upon the fluttering and striving will of 
outworn custom, of unjust law, of inherited in- 
stinct, of malevolent circumstance. If the sym- 
bol of historic tragedy may be found in Othello's 
poignant cry of self-accusation: 

"I kiss'd thee ere I kill'd thee ; — no way but this, 
Killing myself, to die upon a kiss," 

with its acquiescence in retributive justice as re- 
establishing the moral harmony of the world, — 
so may the symbol of modern tragedy be found 
in those great words with which Beatrice Cenci 
goes to meet her fate: 

"My pangs are of the mind, and of the heart, 
And of the soul; ay, of the inmost soul, 
Which weeps within tears as of burning gall 
To see, in this ill world where none are true, 
My kindred false to their deserted selves, 
And with considering all the wretched life 
Which I have lived, and its now wretched end, 
And the small Justice shown by Heaven and Earth 
To me and mine; and what a tyrant thou art, 
And what slaves these; and what a world we make, 
The oppressor and the opprest . . ." 
i- 
For modern tragedy consists in man's failure 

to achieve that peace with his universe which 
marks the close of (Edipus the King or of Othello. 
Such endings in the drama correspond to a state 



THE FOUNDATIONS 5 

of religious or moral certitude in the playwright 
and the audience. The loss of that certitude, the 
crying out after a reconciliation with an uncom- 
prehended world — this it is that constitutes trag- 
edy in the modern drama, j The tragic idea in 
Ghosts, in La Course du Flambeau, in Rose 
Bernd, in Strife, is not based upon a fearful sense 
of human frailty or guilt and a final acquiescence 
in its punishment. It is based upon a vision of 
the apparently "small justice shown by heaven 
and earth" and of "what a world we make, the 
oppressor and the opprest." Thence result those 
endings in the modern drama which are still felt 
by the uninstructed to be inconclusive and discon- 
certing. But these endings are, in the truest 
sense, both artistic and philosophical. They in- 
terpret our incertitude, our aspiration and search 
for ultimate values. '""Historic tragedy deals with 
man's disloyalty to his moral universe and the 
re-establishment of harmony through retribution. 
Modern tragedy deals with his perception of a 
world in which such things can be and such things 
be endured and in which, nevertheless, he must 
strive, if he would live at all, to be at home.j 

This conception of the nature of tragedy made 
for a thorough-going change in the technique of 
the modern drama. An ascending action that 



6 THE MODERN DRAMA 

culminates in the incurring or revelation of guilt 
and a descending action that closes in its expia- 
tion could no longer be used in the dramatic in- 
terpretation of human life. The structure of the 
drama becomes far simpler, following the nat- 
ural rhythm of that life itself, seeking to come 
upon reality and understand some fragment of it, 
hesitating to rearrange the data of experience in 
the light of an anterior ethical assumption. 

Thus, too, in the pursuit of its realities the 
modern drama has had to abandon any arbitrary 
division of the stuff of life into sections fit or 
unfit for artistic treatment. For by what cri- 
terion is such fitness or unfitness to be determined? 
Wherever human beings strive and suffer — there 
is drama! And so our playwrights have enor- 
mously extended the subject-matter of the thea- 
tre, and have vindicated the spiritual and artistic 
values that lurk in the common lives of men. 

Such are the primary characteristics of the 
modern drama which the reader will recognise 
again and again in these pages ; such are the ideas 
and methods which differentiate it from the drama 
of the past — a conception of tragedy as inhering 
in the nature of things rather than in the deeds 
of men, a large simplicity of technique, the con- 



THE FOUNDATIONS 7 

quest of vast regions of life for the interpretation 
of art. 

II 

The whole modern development in the art of 
the theatre is prophetically summed up in the 
career of Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906). It will be 
seen, I think, when the tumult of contemporary 
judgment merges into the quiet certitude of pos- 
terity, that a few of his successors in the modern 
drama have surpassed him in reality and mystery, 
in sweetness and in insight. But behind them 
and their fellows stands that cold, gigantic figure 
with all the visions of its age in its unshadowed 
eyes. Or all but one. For there is, characteris- 
tically, no hint in Ibsen of that sympathy with 
the disinherited of the social order which has so 
deeply influenced the modern stage. 

He began with plays in the romantic tradition 
communicated to Scandinavia by the Germanised 
Dane, CEhlenschlager. Through the medium of 
verse and a semi-romantic technique, he pro- 
ceeded to embody the central and controlling idea 
of all his work positively in Brand (1866), nega- 
tively in Peer Gynt (1867). With the one not- 
able exception of Emperor and Galilean (1873) 



8 THE MODERN DRAMA 

he now turned his attention to the objective de- 
lineation of contemporary reality. With The 
Wild Duck (1884) however, a strong symbolic 
element begins to invade his observation of the 
actual, an element which grows steadily during 
the succeeding years until in his dramatic epi- 
logue, When We Dead Awaken (1899), lt nas 
become coextensive with his art. Romanticism, 
naturalism, symbolism — these three stages mark 
the history of modern literature as they mark the 
work of Ibsen. And this development corre- 
sponds to the parallel development in modern 
thought from the post-Kantian idealists, through 
the scientific positivism of Comte and Spencer, 
to the neo-idealism of Bergson, James and 
Eucken. 

The modern drama, in its stricter sense, how- 
ever, does not arise until both romantic tech- 
nique and romantic philosophy have been more 
or less definitely discarded. Hence we may dis- 
regard the plays of Ibsen that precede 1869, and 
consider at once the body of dramatic work which 
began, in that year, with The League of Touth 
and ended with When We Dead Awaken. 

The initial impulse of Ibsen's mature work was 
an impulse of protest against the social and spirit- 
ual conditions in his native country. It is fairly 



THE FOUNDATIONS 9 

easy to reconstruct these conditions from The 
League of Youth, The Pillars of Society (1877) 
and from Bjornson's The New System (1879). 
There arises from these plays the picture of a 
small and isolated society in a state of cruel in- 
ternal competition. Men struggle meanly for 
mean advantages; the minutest differences in 
wealth and station are emphasised with all the 
bitterness of insecurity; the whole social structure 
is based upon a rigid orthodoxy in morals and re- 
ligion which maintains itself with the stealthy 
ferocity that belongs to growing impotence and 
smouldering panic. Prosperous persons uphold 
a cast-iron respectability that is often at variance 
with their own past. Nowhere a breath of large- 
ness or generous thought or free sincerity; so that 
even unashamed lawlessness would have cleared 
the spiritual atmosphere made heavy and murky 
by these parochial potentates and their time-serv- 
ers. Therefore does the ultra-idealist Brand cry 
out: 

"Even if as slave of lust thou serve, 
Then be that slave without reserve! 
Not this to-day, to-morrow that, 
And something new with each year's flight: 
Be what thou art with all thy might, 
Not piecemeal!" 



io THE MODERN DRAMA 

And therefore Ibsen declared in a letter written 
in 1870: "The principal thing is that one re- 
main veracious and faithful in one's relation to 
oneself. The great thing is not to will one thing 
rather than another, but to will that wjiich one is 
absolutely impelled to will, because one is one- 
self and cannot do otherwise. Anything else will 
drag us into deception." It was against such de- 
ception that Ibsen's cold and analytic wrath was 
turned to the end of his career — deception that 
was fostered, in Bjornson's words "in small souls 
amid small circumstances who develop wretch- 
edly and monotonously like turnips in a bed." 

By 1870, then, Ibsen's impulse of protest 
against Norwegian society had crystallised into 
a doctrine of extraordinary power and import: 
"The great thing is not to will one thing rather 
than another." In these simple words he shifts 
the whole basis of human conduct, denies the su- 
premacy of any ethical criterion, social or reli- 
gious, sweeps aside the conception of absolute 
guilt and hence undermines the foundations of 
the historic drama in its views of man. From 
this negative pronouncement he proceeds at once 
to the positive. The great thing is "to will that 
which one is absolutely impelled to will, -because 
one is oneself and cannot do otherwise. Any- 



THE FOUNDATIONS n 

thing else will drag us into deception." It is to 
be observed that Ibsen, who began as a romantic 
writer, does not greatly stress, theoretically or cre- 
atively, the positivistic limitations of the human 
will. He desires that will to act in utter free- 
dom, guided by no law but that of its own na- 
ture, having no aim but complete sincerity in its 
effort after self-realisation. 

This doctrine which, embodied in play after 
play, stirred and cleansed the spiritual atmosphere 
of Europe, is not as anarchic as it may superfi- 
cially appear. For Ibsen desires the purest and 
most ideal volitions of the individual to prevail. 
His great and grave warning is not to let these 
volitions be smothered or turned awry by mate- 
rial aims, by base prudence, by sentimental altru- 
ism, or by social conventions external to the 
purely willing soul. For every such concession 
leads to untruth which is the death both of the 
individual and of society. 

It follows almost inevitably — for Ibsen was 
nothing if not tenacious and single of purpose — 
that his plays are a series of culminations, tragic 
culminations of the effects of untruth born of 
some impure or materialised or basely intimidated 
will. And it is almost equally inevitable that 
this perversion of the will is often illustrated 



12 THE MODERN DRAMA 

through the relation of the sexes in which law and 
custom, prejudice and social pressure, have most 
tragically wrenched the impulses of the free in- 
dividual. Thus Ibsen, adhering with iron con- 
sistency to his central belief, inaugurates all the 
basic problems and moral protests of the mod- 
ern drama. 

His characteristic theory of life received its 
first mature embodiment in The Pillars of Soci- 
ety (1877). The worm-eaten structure of Ber- 
nick's life which crumbles as the action of the play 
proceeds, is built upon the two base refusals of 
his youth to accept, with all their consequences, 
the free impulses of his personality. He denies 
himself Lona, the woman of his true choice, and 
throws upon another the burden of his relations 
with Mrs. Dorf. Not the error of his passion, be 
it observed, contributes to his downfall, but his 
cowardice in face of the realities of his own soul. 
By various dramaturgic methods, to be noted 
presently, the brittle quality of his existence is 
brought home to him. His purification cul- 
minates in the vital saying: "The spirit of truth 
and the spirit of freedom — these are the pillars 
of society." 

In A Doll's House (1879) Ibsen illustrated his 
theory of life through a subtle inversion of his 



THE FOUNDATIONS 13 

method. The culmination here consists in Nora's 
awakening to the fact that, dazed by social con- 
ventions, by the traditions of the sheltered life 
and its ignorance, she has never been able to be 
a freely willing personality. Hence she discards 
a past woven of actions and acquiescences which 
are, in no deep or intimate sense, her own. But 
Ibsen returns to his more usual procedure in his 
tragic masterpiece Ghosts (1881). The more 
than Thyestian horrors of that brief and fateful 
action spring pitilessly from a concession to that 
external social morality which the blind world 
approves. This is the lesson which, through the 
silent years, has burned itself into Mrs. Alving's 
soul. She shrinks from nothing, now, that soci- 
ety abhors. But it is far too late. Duty and 
piety throttled her will in the crucial moments of 
the past. She can but watch the bursting of their 
dreadful fruit. In the polemic Enemy of the 
People (1882) the conspiracy of an entire soci- 
ety against an undaunted will is shown, and the 
play ends upon the magnificent and characteristic 
note: "He is the strongest man in the world who 
stands alone." The Wild Duck (1884) exhibits, 
not too clearly or powerfully, a variety of char- 
acters corrupted by insufficient sincerity of free 
self-hood. Rosmersholm (1886), on the other 



14 THE MODERN DRAMA 

hand, is but slightly touched with Ibsen's finer 
qualities as a thinker and dramatic artist. It is, 
at bottom, a conventional tragedy of fate and 
crime and retribution, distinguished only by the 
subtler timbre of his workmanship. 

It is, perhaps, not without some special sig- 
nificance that after the disloyalty committed 
against his nobler and more enduring method in 
Rosmersholm, Ibsen should have given his cen- 
tral doctrine its purest and most exquisite expres- 
sion in his next play: The Lady from the Sea 
(1888). The play is, in truth, the key to his 
work by virtue of its clear and almost poetical 
expression of his dominant mood and doctrine. 
The fable is of the utmost simplicity; the sym- 
bolism is not only searching but clear. Never as 
in the more famous Master Builder (1892) is the 
meaning distorted by misleading and contradic- 
tory elements. The lure of the sea which Ellida 
Wangel feels is the call of freedom; the Stranger 
is the projection of her untrammelled will. She 
had not followed Wangel at the dictate of a na- 
tive impulse. Hence she is not acclimated to the 
life of her home, and all the unlived possibil- 
ities of a freer choosing tug at her heart. That 
psychical strain necessarily culminates in a situa- 
tion symbolised by the last coming of the 



THE FOUNDATIONS 15 

Stranger. As Ibsen most truly points out: no 
soul can rob another of its freedom of choice, but 
can at most brutally prevent the translation of 
choice into action. A gleam of that truth comes 
to Wangel. Sincerely he offers Ellida her lib- 
erty at the final moment and, free at last to 
choose, she seeks the security of a familiar home, 
and the wild lure of the great sea-spaces can 
trouble her no more. 

No hint of his deeper purpose is to be found 
in the carefully elaborated portrait of that ignoble 
egotist Hedda Gabler (1890), and not more than 
broken hints in the curiously overrated Master 
Builder. The play has passages that promise 
momently to exhale a haunting power, a subtle 
truth. But they never do. The symbolism radi- 
ates a feeble and flickering light in several direc- 
tions which, in the last analysis, illuminates noth- 
ing. It is possible to whet one's cleverness on 
The Master Build er, not to impart to it a steadi- 
ness of aim and execution that is not there. 

In his last three plays Ibsen returns to his char- 
acteristic motives. The tragedy of Little Eyolf 
(1894) i s ultimately rooted in the fact that All- 
mers drifted into his marriage with Rita and did 
not purely choose her from all the world: the 
quaint and sombre happenings in John Gabriel 



16 THE MODERN DRAMA 

Borkman (1896) can all be traced to the days 
in which Borkman denied his profoundest impulse 
and sold Ella for the mean advantages of the 
world; the sick souls of Rubeck and Irene in 
When We Dead Awaken (1899) die because they 
had denied their real selves. "What is irrevocable 
we see only when we dead awaken." Maja and 
Ulfheim, on the other hand, find an abundant life 
even in the death of the body because they meet 
that death in a union of complete self-affirma- 
tion. They have "willed that which they were 
absolutely impelled to will, because they were 
themselves and could not do otherwise." 

The very literally epoch-making trenchancy of 
Ibsen's revolt against the accepted morality of 
social man is somewhat obscured by the quietness 
of his manner. His medium is strangely unem- 
phatic; his rebels strangely unimpassioned. The 
cry of Nora is the most ringing in all his plays 
and it is by no means the most convincing. Re- 
becca West and Rita Allmers are deeply shaken, 
but they are shaken by the desires of love, not by 
the love of their free desires. Nevertheless, the 
eminent Norseman's contribution to the guidance 
of modern life is unmistakable in its final clear- 
ness. The denial of one's sincerest self, even 
though made in the service of what men call mor- 



THE FOUNDATIONS 17 

ality and institute as law, is an unmixed evil. It 
corrupts the soul that is guilty of it and infects 
others. Society cannot be purified until it is a 
society of free, self-directing personalities. 

This theory of life is, of course, like every 
other, insufficient, and stresses some human qual- 
ities at the expense of others. The greater num- 
ber of human aims must necessarily be collective 
and requires a measurable restraint and a directing 
of the individual impulse. It is open to small 
doubt, on the other hand, that Ibsen's gospel of 
the free personality swept like a current of 
cleansing autumn storm into the prejudice and 
convention-ridden life of the great middle classes 
through the eighteen-hundred and seventies and 
eighties, and that he is still an awakener and a 
herald of liberty and sincerity in the personal life. 
Nor is his influence likely to decrease. Democ- 
racy which began by liberating man politically 
has developed a dangerous tendency to enslave 
him through the tyranny of majorities and the 
deadly power of their opinion. These majorities 
pass restrictive laws which sap the moral fibre of 
society and seek to reduce it to the standards of 
its most worthless elements. They abhor the 
free and self-originating soul — the solitary 
thinker, fighter, reformer, saint — and exalt the 



18 THE MODERN DRAMA 

colourless product of the uniform herd. In a 
society face to face with such dangers the works 
of Ibsen have an inestimable service to perform. 
They will continue to shape free personalities and 
help such personalities to find themselves. 

In his character as a dramatic artist I am in- 
clined to question the perfection which modern 
criticism is wont to ascribe to Ibsen. His work- 
manship, in reality, is very unequal, ranging 
from the pure and proud austerity of Ghosts to 
the trivial intrigue in The Pillars of Society and 
John Gabriel Borkman, at both extremes of his 
career. In the former play the procession in hon- 
our of Bernick at the moment when he has awak- 
ened to the hollowness of his life, the song that 
announces the departure of the unseaworthy ship, 
the dreadful suspicion that Dina and John have 
embarked on it, the actual embarkation and im- 
mediate rescue of Olaf — all these are structural 
tricks of the crassest kind and derived from the 
creaking mechanism of the theatre according to 
Sarcey. Hardly less factitious are the elements 
of dark intrigue that are finally disentangled in 
John Gabriel Borkman. And even in Little 
Eyolf Ibsen stoops to the devices of unexpectedly 
discovered documents holding a melodramatic 
revelation, and of a sudden psychical turn-about 



THE FOUNDATIONS 19 

on the part of Rita for the sake of a satisfactory 
and quite unbelievable ending. Nor, finally, can 
it be forgotten that the feverish suspense during 
long passages of A Doll's House is sustained by 
the external and time-honoured device of a letter 
known to be on its fatal mission, and that the 
last three acts of Rosjnersholm are structurally 
the gradual revelation of an antecedent crime. 

No, Ibsen was not an impeccable technician. 
Never, at any period of his career, did he long 
free himself from the mechanical structure, the 
fortuitous externalities of the older French stage. 
Nevertheless, he was in his own time the earliest 
and the greatest master of modern dramaturgy. 
And he produced at least one faultless master- 
piece in Ghosts. 

His very great and, for their time, quite new 
achievements as a dramatic artist consist in his 
structural economy, his rejection of formal ex- 
position, his creation of atmosphere, and his ad- 
herence to the rhythm of the drama. He gains 
intensity by concentration, not by noisy climaxes 
or rattling curtains. In The Pillars of Society, 
Hedda Gabler and, practically, in Rosmersholm, 
he preserves the unity of place; in A Doll's 
House, Ghosts and John Gabriel Borkman, the 
unities of both time and place. That the mod- 



20 THE MODERN DRAMA 

em drama, seeking to produce the illusion of real- 
ity, should return to the pseudo-Aristotelian uni- 
ties was natural. And in this drama they assume 
a new function and a new importance which Ibsen 
was the first to exemplify. Equally notable is 
his rejection of the older method of formal ex- 
position. That convention permitted characters 
at the opening of a play or act to relate to each 
other, but for the benefit of the audience, facts 
of which, by the very assumptions of the action, 
they were thoroughly aware. The scenes between 
the Marquis de Presle and his friend in the first 
act of Augier's Le Gendre de M. Poirier furnish 
a classical example of this convention. It is in- 
structive, by contrast, to observe the method of 
exposition used in Ghosts. The facts which the 
audience must know in that play are the true char-, 
acter of Alving, the nature of Oswald's malady 
and the origin of Regina. Now these facts are 
communicated to the audience by being tragically 
and inevitably revealed to characters necessarily 
ignorant of them. Thus in the first act Manders 
learns the story of Alving' s real life; in the sec- 
ond act Mrs. Alving is told the secret of Os- 
wald's heritage; in the third act Regina is en- 
lightened as to her parentage. There is no 
speech or gesture directed at the audience. The 



THE FOUNDATIONS 21 

drama has withdrawn into its own intense reality 
and is no longer heard but overheard. 

Ibsen is the creator or, at least, the first con- 
stant practitioner of the elaborate stage-direction 
by which the modern dramatist seeks to fix the 
aspect and mood of the environment in which his 
people act and suffer. In his use of them, these 
directions do not yet attain that blending of 
largeness in purpose and exactness in detail given 
them by the later naturalists. Nor have his 
scenes their variety and warmth. Even the 
ocean, which glimmefs so often in the background^ 
of his settings, has not the multitudinous energy 
and grandeur of a living sea. It is still and 
brackish, and there are no stars over it. But in 
the matter of stage-direction, as of economy in 
structure, organic exposition and a continuity of 
dramatic rhythm unbroken by "asides" or mono- 
logues or scene-divisions, Ibsen has the priority, 
and maintains his prophetic station in the history 
of the modern stage. 

According to a current and popular critical 
error which merges the dramatist into the superior 
stage-carpenter, dialogue is the least considerable 
element in the making of a play. A moment's 
unprejudiced reflection will at once reveal the fact 
that it is the one permanent quality in dramatic 



22 THE MODERN DRAMA 

art. The fable and the structure of the drama 
both undergo inevitable changes from age to age 
with the change of manners, interests, and with 
successive transformations in the mechanism of 
theatrical production. In the dialogue are crys- 
tallised the abiding elements of the drama — the 
projection of character, and the terms upon which 
the spiritual struggle of the characters is enacted. 
It is by virtue of the expressiveness of their me- 
dium that Electra, Hamlet, he Misanthrope, and 
even The Weavers are not only for an age but 
for all time. And it is by his failure in dialogue 
that Ibsen misses greatness as a dramatist. Not 
that dialogue need be beautiful or, in any con- 
ventional sense, eloquent. The piercing reality 
of dramatic speech found in a few of the modern 
naturalists, with its intense embodiment of human 
sorrow and human aspiration, has a grave and 
searching beauty of its own. Ibsen's dialogue 
has neither high poetry nor dense reality; he has 
neither poetically interpreted nor faithfully imi- 
tated the speech of men. His characters dis- 
course in curiously level tones, with their vision, 
apparently, always fixed upon some blankness in 
space and never passionately arrested by the busi- 
ness in hand. A play of Ibsen's acted in any 
language, seems at once to infect the actors with 



THE FOUNDATIONS 23 

that insidious monotony. They speak like som- 
nambulists, without modulation or fervour. I 
have used the word unemphatic. It returns to 
the mind often in dealing with Ibsen. I can 
think of no writer of equal rank in the history 
of literature so lacking in energy, in passion and 
in charm. Yet there he stands in his cold sturdi- 
ness, dominating and foreshadowing the whole of 
the modern drama by his priority in untheatrical 
severity of craftsmanship, and by the magnificence 
of his moral protest — to be surpassed, perhaps al- 
ready surpassed, by the men who were to come 
after him, but never to be neglected or set aside. 

Like his greater contemporary and country- 
man, Ibsen, Bjornstjerne Bjornson (1832-1910), 
began as a romantic playwright. Again like Ibsen 
he felt the impact of realism that marked the 
mid-century and produced The Newly Married 
Couple in 1865. The poet and dreamer in him 
occasionally came to the foreground, as in The 
King (1877) '> b ut > upon the whole, Bjornson may 
be classed among the realists of the modern 
drama. 

His character as a man and artist is not diffi- 
cult to disengage. He lacked Ibsen's incisive in- 
telligence; he was the burly, boyish enthusiast of 



24 THE MODERN DRAMA 

peace, progress, purity — of all the fine, intoxicat- 
ing symbols of the social awakening of his day, 
rarely penetrating, I think, beyond the word and 
the obvious glow and dreams which it induced. 
He was generous, kindly, chivalric, patriotic — 
far more eager, in Bishop Wilson's great saying, 
to live up to what light he had, and clamorously 
to make it prevail than to question whether that 
light was not, after all, darkness. The contem- 
porary praise and popularity of such a character, 
aided by a pleasing personality freely displayed-, 
was inevitable. It is equally inevitable that a 
critical adjustment of his qualities and position 
should follow. 

Largely, and from the first, he was a propa- 
gandist through the medium of the stage. Yet 
for this special task his natural endowment was 
the most inadequate. His thinking is never 
close; his vision of life is never unblurred by his 
moral enthusiasm. It is easy to imagine how M. 
Paul Hervieu would shatter the amiable dra- 
matic assertions of Bjornson. A Gauntlet 
(1883) illustrates his qualities as a thinker and 
artist. The structure is effective without being 
unduly theatrical. The second act, it is interest- 
ing to observe, ends with a cry that is literally 
and dramaturgically identical with the cry that 



THE FOUNDATIONS 25 

ends the second act of M. Brieux's Les A varies 
{Damaged Goods). The characters in A Gaunt- 
let are not without reality or charm. But the 
theme of the play is the iniquity of the double 
standard of sexual morality. Now this is a ques- 
tion of quite enormous difficulty. For the double 
standard has not been established by an act of the 
human will; it is the result of vast and ancient 
forces, biological, moral and economic, which 
have been operative throughout human history 
and are operative to-day. Hence, to deal with 
the problem it is necessary to betray a conscious- 
ness, at least, of these forces, and to discuss their 
possible deflection. Bjornson does nothing of 
the kind. He has discovered a wrong, an ap- 
parent lack of equity in human life, and he pro- 
ceeds to demolish it outright. Alfred Chris ten- 
sen, despite the fact that he has had a mistress, 
declares that he loves Svava truly and faithfully. 
And Svava's mother asks: "Suppose a woman, 
under the same circumstances, had come and said 
the same thing — who would believe her?" And 
Bjornson was quite oblivious of the fact that the 
problem had not even been touched until one had 
accounted for the immemorial instincts and tra- 
ditions, common to all mankind, which would 
dictate the answer to Mrs. Riis's question. Such 



26 THE MODERN DRAMA 

doctrinaire dealing with life is really a remnant 
of the old romanticism on its side of social and 
ethical theorising. 

Bjornson was happier in the treatment of more 
solid and less debatable subjects. Thus A Bank- 
ruptcy (1874) 1S vigorous and convincing. It 
has some of the stuff of human life in it and has 
been the most successful of his plays. His mas- 
terpiece, on the other hand, is probably the first 
part of Beyond Our Strength (1883). Here he 
grasped a situation and a problem of high spirit- 
ual import. No solution was possible. But the 
statement is dramatic and poetic at once. Of es- 
pecial charm and truth is the discussion of the 
clergymen in the second act. Nowhere else does 
Bjornson feel and reason with such delicate just- 
ness. His religious perceptions had deeper roots 
than his sociological opinions. Hence this dra- 
matic apologue of the relations of Christianity to 
the miraculous is his least questionable contribu- 
tion to the modern drama. 

Bjornson' s dramatic craftsmanship is usually 
sound, if rarely remarkable. His best plays are 
solidly built; his dialogue is adequate if no more. 
But nowhere, except in Beyond our Strength, does 
one feel oneself in the presence of that high in- 
tensity which, whether in the reproduction or in- 



THE FOUNDATIONS 27 

terpretation of life, is the mark of every great 
dramatic impulse or method. 

The circle of the moderns — from romanticism 
through naturalism to symbolism — was also de- 
scribed by August Strindberg ( 1 849- 1912). But 
the heart of his immense productivity lies, I take 
it, in his naturalistic period. His symbolism 
dislimns into mere phantasmagoria. But between 
1887 and 1897 he wrote a group of plays which 
belong to the most memorable products of the 
naturalistic drama. 

One cannot span that tortured and potent 
spirit by a formula or a phrase. The secret of 
his uncanny power, however, lay clearly in his 
unequalled capacity for suffering. "Observa- 
tion," Balzac wrote to Mme. Hanska, "springs 
from suffering. Our memory registers only what 
gives us pain." Strindberg's memory clung with 
a cruel and self-tormenting tenacity to what had 
given him pain. The result is an observation of 
life from which we avert our eyes — shamed by 
its merciless truth. No dream or delusion could 
corrupt that soul made remorseless by its own an- 
guish. He lays bare his characters nerve by 
nerve and in each nerve laid bare is also the 
quiver of Strindberg's agony. 



28 THE MODERN DRAMA 

His art — the art of The Father (1887), Com- 
rades (1888), Miss Julia (1888), Creditors 
(1890), The Link (1897) — is the most joyless 
in the world. There is no lifting of the soul to 
a larger vision from the bondage of immediate 
pain. That is his limitation. It may be urged, 
on the other hand, that the pain he describes is 
so keen and absorbing that it gives his characters 
no chance to fight their way to the breathing of 
an ampler air. And that, too, is life. For he 
has chosen to depict the crudest malady of the 
age — the malady that has stolen into the ancient 
and honourable relations of the woman to the 
man. 

He began with the severest consequence of this 
malady, which Hauptmann has also treated. So 
soon as the woman loses her sense of the man as 
friend, protector and, in the last analysis, arbi- 
ter, she is in the individual case stronger than he. 
Not the wife of the navvy; but the wife of the 
thoughtful gentleman, inhibited by ages of chiv- 
alric forbearance and defenceless against a primi- 
tive craft and tenacity which he has long out- 
lived. Thus, in The Father, the man's will, the 
highest expression of his selfhood, is gradually 
corroded as by slow acid. As the captain says to 
his wife Laura: "Yes, you have a diabolical 



THE FOUNDATIONS 29 

power of making your will prevail; but such 
power always belongs to him who shrinks from no 
tactics." We are told that when Laura was a 
little girl she used to feign death to have her will. 
No doubt small boys are self-willed too. But as 
the male grows older he realises the compacts of 
society and the necessity for comradely human ac- 
tion. He fears injustice. The woman, trag- 
ically often, continues the tactics of the child and 
has the power of all unscrupulous and irrational 
forces. It is characteristic of the situation that 
the pivot of the struggle is the daughter of the 
captain and Laura. The captain desires to train 
Bertha for her own good; Laura to satisfy the 
girl's trivial desires and assert the ownership of 
her own motherhood. 

Miss Julia is inferior to The Father in power 
and interest largely because the case it states is 
highly exceptional. And this order of art tri- 
umphs by the representative power of its con- 
crete subject-matter. That power reasserts itself 
in Comrades, the acutest study in the modern 
drama of the gross delusion that marriage is pos- 
sible on a basis of personal and professional sepa- 
rateness. For marriage, as Axel says in the play, 
must be founded upon common interests, not upon 
conflicting ones. And these common interests, in 



30 THE MODERN DRAMA 

normal and healthy unions, must be the home, 
the child and the man's work upon which the 
home and the family and all the historic civilisa- 
tion of mankind are built. Here, on the con- 
trary, is comradeship. Yet Berta does not even 
play that miserable game fairly. What woman, 
with the traditions of the sex behind her, could? 
And so while Axel does hack-work to pay the 
butcher and baker, she works at her art. The 
man finally gathers strength to escape. 

The Maid: A young lady is waiting to see you, sir. 

Axel: Very well; I'm at her service. 

Berta: Is that a new comrade? 

Axel: No, not a comrade, but a sweetheart! 

Berta: And your future wife? 

Axel: Perhaps ! I like to meet a comrade at an inn; 
at home I want a wife. Excuse me ! 

Berta: Good-by, then. And so we are never to meet 
any more? 

Axel: Why not? But only at an inn. Good-by! 

Creditors is a variation on the same theme, even 
subtler and more searching in its analysis, though 
not so representative. Despite the passionate ex- 
aggeration of a soul that has suffered, Gustav 
succeeds in summing up the whole matter. "For, 
look you, the woman is the man's child. If she 
doesn't become his, he becomes hers and then we 




THE FOUNDATIONS 31 

ave a topsy-turvy world." And, finally, in a 
sadder and mellower mood Strindberg once more 
exposed the utter misery of a modern "free" mar- 
riage in that masterpiece of dramaturgy and psy- 
chology, The Link. 

"There are disharmonies in life," says Gustav 
in Creditors, "that cannot be resolved." Such dis- 
harmonies exist in modern marriage, and these 
Strindberg set himself the task of analysing. It 
is a shallow view that sees in him the mere 
misogynist. It is possible to have revered, be- 
yond all human types, the wise mother, the kind 
wife, the ancient priestess of the human hearth, 
and yet to have written Comrades and The Link. 
For that type has presented itself immemorially 
to the imagination and experience of men. The 
predatory suffragette is a thing of yesterday and 
may soon be "with yesterday's seven thousand 
years." Yet for our own time these plays of 
Strindberg's are of the last importance. Amid 
much loose thinking and looser talking he set 
down the bare, frank truth. It may be impos- 
sible to refound that home in which man, from 
of old, has found his joy and peace; it may be 
necessary to shatter and remould anew the whole 
fabric of society and totally to change the rela- 
tions of the sexes. That, however, is another 



32 THE MODERN DRAMA 

matter. It is a valorous deed to have shown that 
marriage and feminism — in its immediate and 
acrid sense — are incompatible. 

This group of five plays has a further impor- 
tance in the history of the modern drama. For 
the magnificent economy of his structure Strind- 
berg had but the single example of Ghosts 
( 1 88 1 ) when he wrote The Father ( 1 887 ) . Ear- 
lier than any other playwright he grasped with 
full consciousness all the principles of modern 
dramaturgy — exclusion of intrigue, seamless con- 
tinuity of structure, a dialogue that produces the 
illusion of real speech. He rightly asserts in the 
preface to Miss Julia (1888) that, as a natural- 
ist, he has wholly abandoned the creation of 
labelled types and has shown the human soul in 
its boundless and troubled complexity and that 
he has avoided the symmetrical give and take of 
French dialogue "in order to let the brains of 
men work unhindered." It is equally noteworthy 
that all these dramas observe the unities of both 
time and place. These technical qualities, united 
to Strindberg's power of psychological analysis, 
tend to make the five pieces discussed his most 
solid contribution to dramatic literature. In 
poetry, in imagination, in variety and charm of 
matter, he is surpassed by many playwrights. 



THE FOUNDATIONS 33 

The sombre concentration with which he exposed 
the disharmonies which had hurt him most acutely 
— that stands alone. 

Ill 

The protest in favour of a new dramatic spirit 
and method was most persistent and most direct 
in France. For it was here that there had arisen, 
largely through the work of the indefatigable 
Eugene Scribe (1791-1861) a mere mechanic art 
of the theatre wholly divorced from reality either 
in life or thought. This drama, which amused 
all Europe, did not even in its heyday pass with- 
out sharp and just criticism. But the criticism 
was faintly voiced and proceeded only from a 
few of the finer spirits of the time. Thus, in his 
Soiree perdue, Alfred de Musset, as early as 
1840, wrote lines which may be freely rendered 
as follows: 

"Alone one night at the Frangais I sate ; 
The author's hit was less than moderate. 
s Twas only Moliere who, 'tis known, at best — 
That blunderer who one day wrote Alceste — 
Had not the art of tickling mind and hide 
By serving a denouement cut and dried. 
Thank heaven, our playwrights take another road, 
And we prefer some drama a la mode, 



34 THE MODERN DRAMA 

Where the intrigue inextricably bound 
Swings, like a toy, the same mechanic round." 

Into this comedy of mere intrigue two men, 
Emile Augier (1820-1889) and Alexandre 
Dumas, fits (1824-1895), sought to inject the ob- 
servation of manners and the power of moral rea- 
soning. The history of the French stage from 
1850 to 1880 is the history of their works. Un- 
der the influence, however, of the naturalistic 
movement in the novel, which was rendered il- 
lustrious soon after the middle of the century by 
the work of Gustave Flaubert, it was felt with a 
growing keenness that the theatre of Augier and 
Dumas was really incapable of either rendering 
or interpreting life. Both playwrights adhered 
in the structure of their pieces to the mechanic 
formula of Scribe, and Dumas invalidated his art 
by the eagerness of his polemics. In this condi- 
tion of the theatre it was but natural that the 
novelists of the new school should have made the 
effort to transfer to it their methods and their 
ideals. 

Those restless and intelligent souls, the Gon- 
court brothers, were first in the field. In their 
journal — that half-heroic, half-pathological rec- 
ord of the literary life — they have set down the 
high hopes, the heartburnings and the bitter dis- 



THE FOUNDATIONS 35 

illusion that attended the difficult production and 
noisy failure of their Henriette Marechal in 1865. 
They were thoroughly aware of the degraded con- 
dition of the French drama in which, as Edmond 
de Goncourt explained, "I do not know a single 
denouement which is not brought about by the sud- 
den overhearing of a conversation behind a cur- 
tain, or by the interception of a letter, or by some 
forced trick of that kind." Yet Henriette 
Marechal itself closes with a pistol shot that kills 
the wrong person, and begins with exposition by 
a series of monologues. Nor did Augier use 
grosser coincidences than that by which Paul de 
Breville, wounded in a quixotic duel for an un- 
known lady, is carried into that very lady's house 
to await his recovery. "But there is truth in our 
play," Edmond plead years later, "far more truth 
than people believe." He was not wholly 
wrong. The fable is ill-managed, the technique 
cumbersome. But Henriette is a delicate and 
charming figure whose nature has been well 
grasped and is well presented. And throughout 
the play one has a sense of brave effort to escape 
from the external and mechanical into a finer re- 
gion of dramatic art. 

A far robuster figure entered the fray for a 
naturalistic drama in the person of Emile Zola 



36 THE MODERN DRAMA 

(1840-1903). Between 1873 an d 1878 he pro- 
duced three plays. But they were hissed from 
the stage, and his longest run was one of seven- 
teen nights. Yet theoretically and despite the 
stupefying narrowness of his positivism, Zola had 
the root of the matter in him. It must have been 
a strange reflection for him that his ideals for 
the theatre were ultimately realised in Germany 
and not in France at all, He began quite, rightly 
by inveighing against the reigning "comedy of 
intrigue" which he declared to be "a mere game 
of patience, a bauble ... in which all solid ele- 
ments are considered boredom," and equally 
against the play with a purpose {piece a these). 
"Never," he finely and truly wrote, "have the 
great masters preached or desired to prove any- 
thing. They have lived and that has sufficed to 
make immortal lessons of their works." His posi- 
tive statements are even more important for the 
development of the modern drama. "What is 
needed to-day is a large and simple delineation of 
men and things, a drama which Moliere might 
have written." And of his own plays he said: 
"The action resides not in some plot but in the 
inner conflicts of the characters; the logic used 
is not one of facts but of sensations and senti- 
ments." His people, he finally declared, "do not 



THE FOUNDATIONS 37 

play but live before the public." This was a re- 
markably early statement (1878) of the meth- 
ods of the best modern dramaturgy. 

Of the three actual plays of Zola, two may be 
dismissed at once. Les Heritiers Rabourdin 
(1874) ls a tiresome variation on a stock comedy 
theme; Le Bouton de Rose (1878), an unconvin- 
cing working over of a phantastic story from Bal- 
zac's Contes Drolatiques. There remains Tker- 
ese Raquin (1873) which may fairly be called 
the first tragedy of the naturalistic theatre. 

The story is of a crudely brutal tinge. Therese 
and Laurent on a boating expedition drown the 
former's husband. But they have not, in the end, 
the strength and the baseness to profit by their 
crime. On the very night of their marriage, 
goaded and maddened by remorse and supersti- 
tious fear, they take prussic acid and die. There 
is, however, no coil of intrigue. The play con- 
sists in the working out through character of the 
necessary consequences of a given action. And 
that action in itself is not fortuitous but had re- 
sulted, in its turn, from the contact of character 
with character. In a word, Zola succeeded meas- 
urably in using a logic "not of facts but of sensa- 
tions and sentiments." The play contains in ad- 
dition that close-packed portrayal of milieu and 



38 THE MODERN DRAMA 

character which is characteristic of the best dra- 
matic work of its kind. As in his novels, to be 
sure, Zola could not wholly escape the lurid. The 
paralysis of Mme. Raquin, Sr., her late discovery 
of her daughter-in-law's guilt, the dreadful re- 
venge of the silenced woman — these are the fruits 
of Zola's romantic appetite for the monstrous and 
merely horrible. Yet Therese Raquin, with its 
stringent evolution, its unity of place and its 
strong verisimilitude bears witness to the power 
and intelligence, if not to the fineness and genius 
of its author's mind. 

The lure of the theatre was also felt by Al- 
phonse Daudet (1840-1897) whose best-known 
play, L'Arlesienne, was produced in 1872. But 
even as a novelist, and despite the immense docu- 
mentation of which he was so proud, 1 Daudet 
hardly belonged to the inner circle of naturalism. 
The austere impersonality of the school was never 
truly his. The scene of UArlesienne is laid in 
his beloved South; it surfers from an overdose of 
his characteristic sweetness, and cannot be said to 
have hastened or even foreshadowed the approach 
of the modern drama. An interesting technical 
point in the play is that the woman of Aries, whose 

1 Vide his Trente ans de Paris. 



THE FOUNDATIONS 39 

character is the exciting force of the action, never 
appears at all. 

The youngest of the great naturalistic masters 
in prose fiction also tried his fortune in the thea- 
tre. But the two plays of Guy de Maupassant 
(1850-1893) appeared in the full tide of the 
modern movement. He is not at his best in them. 
Yet both Musotte ( 1891 ) and La Paix du Menage 
(1893) show traces of his incomparable power. 

Thus it is seen that the naturalistic novelists 
failed to conquer the stage for the methods of 
their school. Their work, however, had its in- 
fluence; later playwrights returned to it for guid- 
ance; it gradually accustomed at least a small 
section of the public to the ideals of the new art, 
and prepared the way for Henri Becque and for 
the men and works of the modern French theatre. 

IV 

I have already named the dramatist who defi- 
nitely founded the modern theatre in France. 
The talent of Henri Becque (1837-1891) was 
slow to mature and even in its maturity hard, 
dry, and far from copious. His work is not en- 
gaging. His mind had neither a touch of inge- 
nuity (the strong point of the older play- 



40 THE MODERN DRAMA 

wrights), nor of that almost silent poetry wrung 
from life itself which distinguishes the later nat- 
uralists. His chief gift is that of a Molierian 
irony — the irony that results from the uncon- 
scious self -revelation of base or corrupt charac- 
ters. "You have been surrounded by rascals, my 
dear, ever since your father's death," Teissier, the 
most brutal of these rascals, says to Marie at the 
end of Les Corbeaux (1882). "You wouldn't 
want a mistress who is not religious! That 
would be dreadful!" Clotilde {La Partsienne, 
1885) exclaims to her lover. The ironic revela- 
tion of a confusion of all moral values could 
scarcely be more succinct and telling. Yet 
Becque makes no display of these passages; he 
does not emphasise them or set them off by the 
modelling of his dialogue. Their power and 
meaning are gradually revealed. 

His first play V Enfant prodigue (1868) is a 
lively comedy of no great interest or originality. 
But very doggedly during these years Becque was 
feeling his way, quite careless of the contempo- 
rary fashions of the stage. He had not yet found 
that way in Michel Paufter (1870). The plot 
is violent and crude; the dialogue stilted and sen- 
timental; and Paris laughed the play to scorn. 
The first period of his activity may be said to 



THE FOUNDATIONS 41 

close with a one-act play La Navette (1878). 
Here, however, amid a conventional plot con- 
veyed through a conventional technique there are 
hints of the ironic manner of his best passages. 

In 1880 Becque produced a robust and keen- 
witted little comedy in one act: Les Honnetes 
Femmes. He had evidently now settled down 
to the close and sober study of character. 
Through Mme. Chevalier he seeks to reveal 
woman's genuine attitude to motherhood and 
marriage. There are almost Shavian hints in her 
self- revelation. But these are quite unconscious 
on Becque' s part. He had gained the imperson- 
ality of the naturalistic drama and, again, two 
years later, gave the public his masterpiece, Les 
Corbeaux. 

The play is a study in character and in social 
conditions. It is wholly free from polemic in- 
tention of any kind. A piece of human life un- 
folds itself. The technique has not yet the plain 
and bare nobility attained by Hauptmann or 
Hirschfeld or Galsworthy at their best. But 
there is neither trickery nor mechanical interfer- 
ence. The illusion of the rhythm of life is main- 
tained throughout. The second act trails off into 
a natural, desperate, human silence as one dun- 
ning letter after another is read. 



42 THE MODERN DRAMA 

We are introduced to the family of a moder- 
ately wealthy bourgeois. M. Vigneron has a 
wife and three daughters, Judith, Marie and 
Blanche. The latter is betrothed to a young 
man of small means but of good family. Vig- 
neron is entirely self-made. He has suffered pri- 
vations in his youth and his plenteous table is now 
his chief pleasure. He overeats and overworks. 
The first act ends with his death from an apo- 
plectic stroke. 

There follow the consequences. The women 
are quite unskilled and ignorant of affairs. 
Hence the vultures gather — chief of them 
Teissier, the late Vigneron's partner, but also 
architects, furnishers, tradesmen of all sorts and 
the family solicitor. One kind of pressure after 
another is applied. Teissier and the solicitor 
talk of saving what little is left of the estate. 
Blanche's engagement is broken. Marie, the most 
clear-seeing of the three girls, is not unaware of 
the chicanery that surrounds them. But their ne- 
cessities are immediate. The women are timid, 
doubtful of their own suspicions, and finally agree 
to the solicitor's plans. Judith, who is a musi- 
cian, entertains the hope that she may be able to 
assume the burden of the family. But her talent 
is not sufficient for anything except to introduce 



THE FOUNDATIONS 43 

her to a life of shame. What is left? Marie 
consents, quite bravely and humanly, to marry 
the sordid old Teissier who immediately proceeds 
to deal with the other vultures. 

The dialogue is not polished nor is it particu- 
larly racy. The structure is, at times, almost 
crude. Yet the simple facts of life and their 
meaning are stamped upon the memory by 
Becque's dramatic irony. The play, with all its 
imperfections, is a masterpiece, foreshadowing 
the long line of works that forms the chief dis- 
tinction of the modern drama. 

La Parisienne is more closely-knit structurally 
and far better written than Les Corbeaux. The 
unity of place is maintained and the movement 
is both swift and nimble. Here the dramatist's 
whole art is concentrated upon the ironic self- 
revelation of a single character. Clotilde is the 
woman who is respectably adulterous, sentimen- 
tally vicious. She amuses herself with her lovers 
and is concerned to better her husband's position. 
She is utterly unaware of her own corruption and 
makes speech after speech that is memorable for 
its incisive moral irony. 

About the whole career of Becque there is 
something poverty-stricken and frustrated. Ad- 
mirable as are his best plays, they seem wrung 



44 THE MODERN DRAMA 

from a soul without passion or spiritual fervour. 
But their importance in the history of the drama 
is quite secure. 



By 1885 the "well-made" play of the French 
type was definitely discredited by all the acutest 
and freshest critical minds in Europe. In Ger- 
many and France the eager young leaders of the 
modern drama were gradually finding their way 
toward productivity. But the official and com- 
mercial theatres were closed to them. The great 
public knew little or nothing of the modern 
movement except as, faintly and distortedly 
enough, it was aware of the scandal and terror 
that had followed in the wake of A Doll's House 
and Ghosts. Nor was this all. The art of act- 
ing, developed for many years in harmony with 
external effectiveness and artificial eloquence, was 
in no condition to interpret the simple realities 
of the new drama. Censorships and police regu- 
lations, moreover, made any public performance 
of modern plays difficult and dangerous. 

In this state of affairs M. Andre Antoine, a 
Parisian actor and manager, completely in sym- 
pathy with the naturalistic drama, established the 
epoch-making Theatre Libre in 1887. It was 



THE FOUNDATIONS 45 

not, in the ordinary sense, a theatre at all. Pri- 
vate performances were given for subscribers 
only, and thus the problems of both censorship 
and of commercial profit were eliminated at once. 
Antoine himself acted and trained his associates 
in the quiet reproduction of the tones and ges- 
tures of life. The names of many of the play- 
wrights whom Antoine introduced to the world 
have already fallen into a semi-obscurity — Jean 
Jullien, George Ancey, Camille Fabre. But he 
opened the careers of Brieux and Curel; he gave 
Paris Ghosts , Tolstoi's The Might of Darkness 
and, in later years, The Weavers of Gerhart 
Hauptmann. Furthermore, in the very year of 
its organisation, the company of M. Antoine 
played in Berlin and vitally helped the birth of 
the new drama in Germany. 

Two years later, in 1889, the Free Stage Soci- 
ety (Verein Freie Biihne) was established in Ber- 
lin. The brilliant journalist, Maximilian Har- 
den, the critics, Theodor Wolff and Paul Schlen- 
ther, the skilful stage-manager and defender of 
naturalism, Otto Brahm, all had their share in 
the founding of the society which shaped so re- 
markably the fortunes of the modern drama. 
The plan of the Freie Biihne was in all respects 
identical with that of Antoine. And like the 



46 THE MODERN DRAMA 

Theatre Libre, it began with Ibsen, with Tolstoi, 
with Zola and Goncourt, and had the memorable 
fortune of opening the theatre to Hauptmann. 

Both stages had many successors and imita- 
tors. The modern drama was thus first presented 
to small and picked audiences from whom it 
gradually passed to a larger public. As Brahm 
admirably put it: "The success of the free stage 
societies meant their extinction." Both in France 
and in Germany the masters of the modern 
drama, one after another, conquered the official 
and commercial theatres. In England, where the 
Independent Theatre was opened with Ibsen and 
with Shaw in 1891, the function of a free stage 
cannot yet, in Brahm's sense, be said to have been 
completely exercised. In America its use is still 
to come. The place of these theatres in the his- 
tory of the modern stage, however, plainly dis- 
poses of the critical delusion, so frequently nursed 
in England and America, that a dramatic move- 
ment lacks greatness and force because it does 
not at once appeal to the populace. The origins 
of the modern drama on the Continent illustrate 
the fortunes of an art that, through the media- 
tion of liberal and intelligent audiences, was grad- 
ually communicated to the slow moving masses 
of men. 



CHAPTER TWO 

THE REALISTIC DRAMA IN FRANCE 

I 

A moderately acute observer, frequenting the 
theatres of Paris in the years that followed the 
founding of the Theatre Libre, would have ex- 
perienced little difficulty in foretelling the exact 
character of the whole modern movement on the 
French stage. The attitude of such an observer 
to the plays he saw would have varied, of course, 
with his age and tastes and nationality. Con- 
cerning two facts, however, he could not long 
have remained in doubt: The structural charac- 
ter of the French drama had undergone a pro- 
found change; the old patterns had been defi- 
nitely remoulded. But the change was not, upon 
the whole, in the direction of that transference 
of naturalistic aims and methods to the art of 
the theatre for which Henri Becque had so long 
and so valiantly laboured. 

It is necessary to assume for my observer, no 

47 



48 THE MODERN DRAMA 

doubt, a taste for new talents and first nights. 
Given that taste he would have seen in 1890 
Brieux's Menages d' Artistes at the Theatre Libre 
and Jules Lemaitre's Le Depute Leveau at the 
Vaudeville; in 1891 he would have returned from 
the Odeon knowing that he had witnessed a mas- 
terpiece oi a new kind in Amour euse by Georges 
de Porto-Riche. But 1892 would have been his 
great year. For in that year he would have seen 
Brieux, still at the Theatre Libre, display his 
most solid and enduring gifts in the first two acts 
of Blanchette; he would have seen arise on the 
boards of that same playhouse the sombre and 
mysterious glow of Francois de Curel's genius. 
Nor is this all. At the Vaudeville, within the 
space of a few months, he might have been pres- 
ent at Henri Lavedan's first decisive success with 
Le Prince d'Aurec, and at Paul Hervieu's first 
display of moral and intellectual gymnastics in 
Les Paroles restent. 

Now if my hypothetical play-goer had been, 
as is not unlikely, over forty, fond of the bril- 
liant artifice traditional on the French stage, and 
a more or less devout reader of the critiques of 
Francisque Sarcey, the new methods and experi- 
ments he saw would have touched him with a 



THE DRAMA IN FRANCE 49 

sense of pain and disillusion. The drama was, 
quite obviously, ceasing to be an art governed 
only by its own conventions, and absorbing only 
so much of the living reality as could be trans- 
muted into theatrical effectiveness. Intrigue, in 
the older sense, had been very nearly eliminated 
from the new plays; there was no action merely 
for its own sake. If the fable was based upon 
some decisive action, that action had usually 
taken place long before the unfolding of its moral 
and spiritual consequences upon the stage. More 
often, however, the play arose from a character 
or a condition, rather than from any action. 
Equally disconcerting must have been the fact 
that some of these plays showed no progression, 
but left their characters very much where they 
found them. In other words, my observer would 
have discovered, to his delight or dismay, all the 
earmarks of the modern drama in the early work 
of the men who were to dominate the French stage 
of the succeeding quarter of a century. 
I The technique of the new drama was, neces- 
sarily, not only simplified but far more flexible. 
The relentless pattern of Scribe and his successors 
was broken: Exposition, progression, resolution, 
illustrative or antithetical action — both within the 



So THE MODERN DRAMA 

act and within the frame of the whole play, all 
might be lacking. 1 The plays, by all the tradi- 
tional rules of the game, should have been inef- 
fectual upon the stage. Yet they were not. 
Dialogue alone, though rarely epigrammatic or 
neatly dovetailed, had undergone no fundamental 
change. The dialogue of the French drama is 
still literary in the narrower sense. The Parisian 
play-goer of the early nineties, unlike his Ger- 
man contemporary, was not shocked by hearing 
the unmistakable accents of his own daily speech 
and voice float to him across the footlights. Nor, 
reduced to the printed page, did these new plays 
show that elaborate exactitude in the description 
of scene, character, gesture and mood which the 
great Scandinavian dramatists had introduced 
and the German naturalists had just perfected. 
In other words, the modern drama in France, 
subtle, flexible and trenchant in theme and tech- 
nique as it is, has not been, as I began by pointing 
out, steadily naturalistic at any time. Brieux 
alone achieves, rarely in more than a single act, 
passages of broad and robust objectivity. But 
always his over-eager intellect breaks in; and 
either shatters or slowly analyses away the world 

1 For a discriminating but by no means hostile description 
of the traditional technique cf. Augustin Filon: De Dumas 
& Rostand, pp. 14-17. 



THE DRAMA IN FRANCE 51 

he has created. Now naturalism is the product 
of a brooding and contemplative mind. It is 
watchful of the vision of life, but very patient; 
not over-zealous to change this essentially change- 
less world, nor desirous of reducing its vast multi- 
formities to the trim confines of a moral or an 
inference. The modern drama of France, on the 
contrary, is restlessly intelligent and even argu- 
mentative. It is, like the whole of French litera- 
ture, vividly social, immensely preoccupied with 
moral ideas and careless of facts except as they 
illustrate the ideas which the playwright has at 
heart. Thus it comes about that the most illus- 
trious master of the contemporary stage in 
France, Paul Hervieu, as well as his lesser col- 
league, Eugene Brieux, is a preacher of doctrine 
rather than a creator of character. 

The activity of the French drama during the 
past twenty years has been quite literally enor- 
mous. Hence I must exclude from my interpre- 
tative survey those figures which do not add to 
an understanding of the character — so diverse and 
yet so homogeneous — of the modern drama. I 
omit, therefore, with little hesitation, the solidly 
observed work of Georges Courtelines, the ami- 
able comedies of Alfred Capus, the high-pitched 
emotional plays of Henri Bernstein. Nor, on the 



52 THE MODERN DRAMA 

other hand, is it advisable to touch upon the in- 
creasing throng of talents that yet lack outline 
and perspective. We shall learn all that is nec- 
essary from the work of seven playwrights which 
by its scope, significance and level of accomplish- 
ment holds and illustrates the national stage. 
These playwrights are Georges de Porto-Riche, 
Francois de Curel, Henri Lavedan, Eugene 
Brieux, Paul Hervieu, Jules Lemaitre and Mau- 
rice Donnay. 

II 

M. Georges de Porto-Riche (b. 1849) has 
called his collected plays Theatre d? Amour. The 
title is just. For M. de Porto-Riche is quite ex- 
clusively the psychologist of love. Alone of the 
modern French dramatists he began his career by 
writing and publishing verses. Yet it would be 
vain to look in his plays for lyric ardour or ro- 
mantic passion. Beauty he sees in love, but a 
beauty that is touched with mournfulness. His 
insight into the maladies of love, into the diffi- 
culties of the human heart, is so complete, that 
it has silenced in him all protest or precept. He 
analyses with a quiet but unerring kindliness that 
nervous, passionate, sad battle which the mod- 
ern mind calls love — love, now no longer the 



THE DRAMA IN FRANCE 53 

blending of a sacred weakness into a larger and 
sustaining life, but the bitter strife between man 
and woman, fatally hostile to each other in their 
new separateness and incapable of any harmoni- 
ous union of some other, yet undiscovered kind. 
Of these conflicts the characters of Porto-Riche 
have no objective consciousness. They experi- 
ence them; they do not reflect upon them or an- 
alyse them. They know that to endure love at 
all takes whatever one has of delicacy, of self- 
abnegation, of the power to suffer. Yet they 
know, too, that love is the eternally beautiful 
and desirable. Hence they speak with voices 
slightly subdued, and their creator has lent them 
a subtle and well-cadenced eloquence, passionate 
yet temperate, elegant yet sincere. 

Porto-Riche made his first appearance as a play- 
wright toward the end of 1888 at the Theatre 
Libre with a one-act comedy, La Chance de Fran- 
coise. The piece is structurally imperfect. The 
awkward convention of the impossible "aside'' is 
used and the characters are pulled about mechan- 
ically. But already the author understands the 
root of the matter. Franchise is the modern mid- 
dle-class woman, freed from nearly all physical 
burdens and material tasks, and making of love 
her calling and her occupation. Thence arise the 



54 THE MODERN DRAMA 

enormous emotional demands which she makes 
upon her husband. The latter, however, is an 
artist and philanderer, and for this reason Porto- 
Riche's first statement of his favourite "case" 
lacks justness and representative power. Uncom- 
mon, too, are the perfect humility and sweetness 
of Francoise which make her condemn even her 
silent suffering as in the nature of a reproach. 
For such a temperament there is no hope except 
— as the author clearly saw — in the sadly joyous 
cry of Francoise to her husband with which the 
play ends: "She has betrayed you, Lovelace; 
you are growing old !" 

The fine analytic and dramatic power so clearly 
present in La Chance de Francoise came to ad- 
mirable maturity three years later in the three- 
act play, Amoureuse. It is by virtue primarily 
of this play that Porto-Riche's name belongs defi- 
nitely to the history of the French theatre. It 
has never, from its first appearance to the present 
year, been long absent from the Parisian stage. 
For years it formed a solid addition to the reper- 
tory of Mme. Re jane, and in 1908 it enjoyed a 
new triumph at the Comedie-Francaise. 

Amoureuse is an extraordinarily complete and 
searching presentation of the problem of modern 
love. Dr. Etienne Feriaud is a distinguished 



THE DRAMA IN FRANCE SS 

physician and investigator with a noble and virile 
faith in his mission and in his type. "It is they 
whom you jeer at," he says to his frivolous friend 
Pascal, "it is the scientists, the artists and the 
poets who have bettered this imperfect world and 
made it more endurable. . . . Doubtless they 
have been bad husbands, indifferent friends, re- 
bellious sons. Does it matter'? Their labours 
and their dreams have sown happiness, justice and 
beauty over the earth. They have not been kind 
lovers, these egoists, but they have created love 
for those who came after them." Dr. Feriaud, 
always admired by women, has had his adven- 
tures, though the chief of these was eminently 
staid and sensible. At forty he has married, for 
love, to be sure, but quite definitely in order to 
pursue, in the suave peace of his own home, his 
intellectual aims. In making these reasonable 
plans he has reckoned without the psychology of 
the modern woman. Mme. Germaine Feriaud, as 
she tells him in a brilliant passage, has not been 
surfeited with passion and romance before mar- 
riage. In marriage she must find her passion and 
her romance. Unendurable as her exactions are, 
she esteems them nobler and braver than the sen- 
sible comforts of middle-aged matrimony. The 
result is that Feriaud can neither work nor think. 



56 THE MODERN DRAMA 

"I have lost the right to be alone," he cries out, 
"she rummages in my brain as though it were a 
chest of drawers." He writes his letters in a 
restaurant to avoid Germaine's nerve-racking in- 
quisitiveness. Her feminine adornments are on 
his desk, his house is in disorder, dispute follows 
reconciliation, and reconciliation, dispute. He 
has accepted an invitation to represent the med- 
ical science of France at a congress in Florence. 
By her troubling and indirect appeals, by her half- 
hidden cajoleries, Germaine causes him — appar- 
ently by his own will — to withdraw at the elev- 
enth hour and stay with her. No sooner has he 
made his consent to stay irrevocable than the sub- 
tle rancour that is necessarily at the heart of such 
a situation breaks forth. He tells Germaine the 
brutal truth at last : He is suffocating spiritually 
and physically because she has the fatal power of 
putting him in a state of mind which is contrary 
to the good advice she gives him but in harmony 
with those intimate desires of her own which she 
dare not formulate. He must have freedom and, 
since she threatens him with an act of irreparable 
rebellion and vengeance, he offers her with cold 
sarcasm to Pascal. Infuriated by his cool analy- 
sis of their emotional situation, she takes him at 
his word. But Germaine has her own notions of 



THE DRAMA IN FRANCE 57 

honour. She confesses her sin and turns to leave 
the house. At the door Etienne stops her. Love 
is deeper than wasted days, stronger than sin. 
"Why have restlessness and jealousy forced me 
to re-open this door?" he laments. "Alas, we 
have torn at each other like bitter foes, irrepar- 
able words have been spoken; I have misunder- 
stood you, you have betrayed me and yet — I am 
here. It seems as though we were riveted to- 
gether by all the evil we have done each other, 
by all the shameful words we have spoken." 
"But we will not be happy," she cries. And all 
his answer is: "What does it matter*?" 

I do not think that M. de Porto-Riche has 
equalled Amour euse either in Le Passe (1897), 
despite the engaging and austere charm of Dom- 
inique Brienne, nor in the tragic, though painful, 
Le vieil homme. But this play served, in 1911, 
to recall to the entire Parisian press the fact that 
France possesses one dramatist who unites with 
magnificent economy of workmanship — fewness 
of characters, unity of place and almost of time 
— a marvellous knowledge of human passion 
which he has never consented to dilute by rapid 
production or to subordinate to a merely theatri- 
cal effectiveness. 



58 THE MODERN DRAMA 

M. Francois de Curel (b. 1854) has been called 
a psychologist. I am willing to grant him that 
title, although his psychology has a way of be- 
ing, at crucial points, altogether incredible. In 
truth, he has a thousand shortcomings as a drama- 
tist and yet this remarkable virtue, that, in a coun- 
try of social talents and clear accomplishments, 
he is so rigorousty, so mysteriously himself. It 
is difficult to imagine where he gained his intense 
and sombre vision of life. One fancies him, like 
his own Robert de Chantenelles, the son of an an- 
cient family fallen upon evil days, passing his 
boyhood and youth in the vast greenery of some 
forgotten and solitary park. Beyond the park 
are great stretches of barren country. Within it, 
here and there, are pools, deep and old and green. 
A few white swans float on these stagnant waters 
and fragments of old statuary crumble amid the 
shadows. Here the youth, dreaming and think- 
ing, built himself that vision of human life and 
character which no contact with the world has 
been able to obliterate or change. Here he must 
have conceived those wide-eyed, wandering souls 
with their strange nobility and strange passions 
who people his plays. But in whatever way one 
seeks to disengage the peculiar qualities of Curel's 
genius, the spirit of the man will scarcely admit 



THE DRAMA IN FRANCE 59 

a very intimate approach. It remains in its ar- 
dent, troubled obscurity. 

He mastered at the very outset of his career 
the methods of modern dramaturgy which fell in 
with his native bent. His fables are of souls at 
conflict with themselves or with each other; of 
visible action there is little. Hence a few char- 
acters and a limited scene suffice him. The 
drama of complicated intrigue and rattling cur- 
tains would have silenced him effectually. Of 
dialogue he is a master and writes it, especially 
in his earlier pieces, with a haunting vibrancy of 
modulation which carries one through speeches 
that are not seldom inordinately long. 

M. de CurePs plays are few. And yet within 
their narrow range he seems to have exhausted 
the number of situations with which he can deal 
powerfully. His latest play Le Coup d'Aile 
(1906) is a tissue of sheer psychological violence, 
though even here one must admit that wild en- 
ergy — like Charlotte Bronte's — which, for mo- 
ments at least, silences protest and disbelief. JJut 
indeed all his fables are difficult and strange: A 
woman is abandoned by her betrothed. She tries 
to kill the young wife who has been preferred to 
her and retires to a convent. Eighteen years 
pass. The man dies and she returns to the world. 



6o THE MODERN DRAMA 

She discovers that the wife has not kept, accord- 
ing to the promise that was made, the shameful 
secret. Thus the false saint renounced life in 
vain. She seeks now to rob her rival of an only 
daughter, but a message of memory and affection 
from the dead man — only now transmitted — 
softens the harsh waywardness of her soul and 
she returns to the cloister (L'Envers d'une 
Sainte, 1892). Another woman, discovering her 
husband's vulgar liaison leaves her home and her 
children in an access of proud fury and permits 
herself to be thought bad or mad for sixteen 
years. Then she returns having — if one will be- 
lieve it — stifled so long the agony of her mother- 
hood, and rescues her daughters from the corrupt- 
ing influences of her husband's life (V Invitee, 
1893). And still another woman, brave, young, 
intelligent, permits herself, loving him in silence, 
to be married as a matter of mere form, for so- 
cial and business reasons, to an eminent politician 
who — as it is denominated in the bond — is to keep 
his mistress. The young wife conquers through 
her wisdom and her beauty and turns her shadow 
into a substance (La Figurante, 1896). It is 
needless to dwell on the incredibly self -torturing 
souls in V Amour brode (1893), or on that savage 
girl who, disillusioned with the Western civilisa- 



THE DRAMA IN FRANCE 61 

tion grafted upon her unconquerable primitive- 
ness, becomes a queen in some far island of the 
Southern seas (La Fille sauvage, 1902). Illog- 
ical and monstrous as these fables are, Curel's in- 
tensity and almost tragic conviction wrests from 
us an unwilling and temporary assent. 

His masterpiece is his second play: Les Fos- 
siles (1892). In a great, shadowy chateau live 
the Duke de Chantenelles, his wife and his chil- 
dren, Robert and Claire. Cut off by their lineage 
and traditions from the life of the Republic, they 
pass a morbid and silent existence. The duke 
hunts furiously to deaden his disappointment and 
his grief. For Robert is dying of consumption, 
and with him the house of Chantenelles is doomed. 
To console him in his last days Robert asks for 
the presence of Helene Vautrin, a poor school- 
fellow of Claire's who once passed many months 
as a guest of the Chantenelles. Robert con- 
fesses that she was his mistress and has borne him 
a child. The dying man's wish is granted, de- 
spite Claire's desperate opposition, and, since the 
child is a boy, a marriage is determined upon 
which will save the ancient house from destruc- 
tion. But Claire's struggle grows more embit- 
tered. She has sent Helene out into the world 
on account of the girl's shameful relations to the 



62 THE MODERN DRAMA 

duke. The latter, however, silences his daughter 
by an appeal to the supreme law of their lives. 
She consents to the outrage for the sake of the 
continuance of her race. Helene comes. She 
had yielded to the duke, it appears, through ig- 
norance and confusion. But on his return home 
her real love was given to Robert. Now Robert is 
ordered South and his young wife pleads with 
him that, after his death, she be permitted to go 
with her child and live her own life. Claire 
hears her and, in terror lest all their monstrous 
consents and abnegations have been in vain, cries 
out to Robert the dreadful truth. The duke con- 
firms it with the cry : "The child is — ours !" De- 
liberately Robert returns to the frost-bound cha- 
teau of the North to die swiftly. Beside his bier 
Claire reads his last directions: Helene may take 
the boy elsewhere and train him to a life of true 
nobility — a nobility not less austere because it 
will not disdain to share the life of its age and 
country. And Claire must watch over these two, 
in utter forgetfulness of self, in order that these 
wrongs may be, in some wise, expiated. Are 
these not almost Thyestian horrors? But the 
play burns with the white heat of that unflinch- 
ing dedication to an ideal of secular greatness and 
endurance. To be sure, we do not believe in 



THE DRAMA IN FRANCE 63 

Helene who speaks the unspeakable truth in vir- 
ginal accents. But that is Curel, whose sense of 
measure and probability are lost in his passionate 
absorption. 

His work is unequal, violent and tortured at 
its best. But it is not easily forgotten, not lightly 
put aside. The man seems a changeling in his 
country of firm, sane and accomplished masters, 
of brilliant, well-tempered, intellectual achieve- 
ment. His public recognition must always be 
partial and hesitant, and I am glad to pay this 
tribute to the genius — however turbid and how- 
ever often touched with futility — of Frangois de 
Curel. 

Ill 

The drama, in its stricter meaning, attracted 
only gradually the brilliant and varied energies of 
M. Henri La vedan ( b. 1 859 ) . He began with nov- 
els and then proceeded to write down, in number- 
less dialogues, which never attain the structural 
fulness and complexity of even one-act plays, the 
moral history of his age. These dialogues em- 
body characteristic moments in the life of mod- 
ern society — moments held fast by an astonish- 
ingly acute and detailed power of observation and 
rendered in the easiest and most living speech to 



64 THE MODERN DRAMA 

be found in French. They are prose idylls of 
the decadence of the neo-Latins; they embrace 
every social class and every shade of contem- 
porary psychology. Grouped in series of twenty 
or thirty under significant headings, they illus- 
trate the fact that M. Lavedan's observation has 
been very seriously directed. He is not unaware 
of the possibility that Les Jeunes, Le Lit, Les 
Marionettes, Leur Beau Physique, Leur Coeur, 
Leur Soeurs, Les ~P elites Visites, may teach the fu- 
ture more concerning the life and manners of the 
expiring nineteenth century than many noisier and 
more pretentious works. These studies in dia- 
logue do not, unhappily, belong to my subject 
and I must pass on to the eleven plays which M. 
Lavedan has given to the French stage, between 
1890 and 1911. 

For reasons sufficiently dark to a foreigner his 
first play Une Famille (1890) was crowned by 
the Academy and played at the Come die-Fran' 
caise. Virtue, to be sure, triumphs in the play, 
^but the intrigue creaks obviously around a me- 
chanical device to a hollow ending) One can 
very well understand, on the other hand, the re- 
sounding success of Le Prince d'Aurec (1892) and 
its sequel, Les deux No blesses (1894), without 
granting either play a very high degree of dra- 



THE DRAMA IN FRANCE 65 

matic or literary value. In these two pieces M. 
Lavedan undertook to discuss the present status 
and moral outlook of the nobility of France. The 
young Prince d'Aurec, of illustrious descent and 
noble traditions, is a typical blageur of his par- 
ticular decade. He jeers at all the ideals which, 
by his birth and station, he should normally up- 
hold. A furious gambler, and on the point of 
complete ruin, he is quite willing to sell the an- 
cestral sword of the Connetable d'Aurec, and puts 
himself — as does his wife on her own account — 
hopelessly into the power of a Jewish banker. 
At the last moment the situation is saved and the 
Prince is recalled to a brief consciousness of his 
duties by his mother. The old duchess, however 
— and here one at once surprises M. Lavedan's 
moral — is not by birth an aristocrat at all. She 
was the daughter of a wealthy merchant, mar- 
ried for her money by the older d'Aurec even as 
Mile. Poirier in Augiefs play of nearly fifty 
years before. It is the born bourgeoises in a word, 
who sustains the great traditions of the house of 
Aurec. And in Les deux Nobles ses it is by a 
d'Aurec who, under the plebeian name of Roche 
has become a modern captain of industry, that 
the fortunes of the house are retrieved. Of the 
house? Scarcely. For Suzanne de Touringe, on 



66 THE MODERN DRAMA 

marrying the oil king's son, determines to be sim- 
ply Mme. Roche. Thus the nobility of labour 
and the nobility of birth are not really blended 
into a new future for the aristocracy. The for- 
mer absorbs the latter and M. Lavedan's real is- 
sue is still to seek. ^^Technically both plays are 
lumbering; the second has a violently melodra- 
matic plot; the dialogue is, in many places, de- 
clamatory and conventional. 

No, it is not in these pieces that I am able to 
recognise Lavedan's permanent contribution to the 
French drama, nor in the wordy and flamboyant 
plays of a later period (Le Marquis de Priola, 
1902; Le Duel, 1905). I recognise that contri- 
bution in the three, I am sorry to say, scan- 
dalous comedies; Viveurs (1895), Le nouveau 
Jeu (1898), Le vieux Marcheur (1894), anc ^ m 
the mellower tone and real charm of his most 
recent play, Le Gout du Vice (1911). 

This play throws light not only on the charac- 
ters who appear in it but upon the temperament 
and career of M. Lavedan himself. The taste 
for vice, in its literal sense, is as old as mankind. 
But here is a group of people who cultivate it be- 
cause it is the fashion of the hour, because they 
are ashamed of goodness and force themselves to 
alien immodesties. How does the taste for vice 



THE DRAMA IN FRANCE 67 

express itself? In a morbid horror of the impu- 
tation of priggishness, "in skirting precipices, in 
brushing the wings of vice, in talking about im- 
possible things and asserting what one would 
never dare commit." It is from such motives 
that M. Lavedan' s Lortay writes semi-obscene fic- 
tion, and that the altogether delightful Mirette 
of the play apes a corruption of which she is in- 
capable, talks Casanova, and reads Paul et Vir- 
ginie. When they have found each other, his oc- 
cupation is, quite naturally, gone. "What shall 
I write now?" he asks in dismay. "The Distaste 
for Vice !" Mirette flashes out. 

The whole is an experience which, with an 
acuter consciousness, of course, M. Lavedan has 
himself known. Viveurs, Le nouveau Jeu and Le 
vieux Marcheur owe their stronger and more vivid 
qualities to a taste for vice. For, despite an oc- 
casional undertone of irony, M. Lavedan is very 
calmly tolerant of these creatures whom he has 
so magnificently observed and so tellingly bodied 
forth. These plays of the people who have "de- 
sires, thirsts, hungers and no souls" are very hon- 
estly and solidly built, robustly real and sober. 
They alone, among Lavedan's plays, are without 
shabby concessions to the mere .stage. The dia- 
logue in them, too, is subtle, flexible, unafraid of 



68 THE MODERN DRAMA 

reality. The world they portray is a thick 
world; it is concrete and tangible and, in no way, 
a theatrical schematisation of the real. 

The Viveurs form the hot-eyed rout of the 
boulevards, reeling from one joyless pleasure to 
another in a restless fever of attempted forgetful- 
ness ; spurring the weary flesh by new vices — sati- 
ated and yet tireless. We see these women at 
their tailor, the men and women at a night cafe 
and in the waiting room of a fashionable physi- 
cian who shares their vices and their disillusion. 
From this crowd there gradually emerges one al- 
most tragic figure. Mme. Blandin, stung to the 
soul at last, implores her husband for a different 
life. She is refused and hurls herself back, ut- 
terly desperate, into the murky stream. Le nou~ 
veau Jeu is an abysmal pantomime of arid souls. 
Yet it never abandons the mood and gait of com- 
edy. It portrays the striving after what, in the 
more vulgar English phrase, is "up-to-date." 
The incidents of the play will not bear telling. 
But the characters stand forth tangibly in all their 
spiritual poverty, and the note of irony assumes 
a larger significance at the play's end. The 
courtesan explains to the judge of instruction the 
lust for mere opposition and empty paradox that 
animates this world. And the judge bows before 



THE DRAMA IN FRANCE 69 

her with these words : "You have instructed me." 
Le 1 ' ' larcheur — the title tells the story — 

ranks in vividness and solidity somewhat below 
"0 predecessors. 
Such are the products of M. Lavedan's taste 

for vice. Like his own Lortav and Mirette he 

j 

has known the reaction and in the second mood 
has written Catherine (1896) and Eire (1909). 
But a reaction from the contemplation of vice is 
apt, in its merely negative character, to fall upon 
an unreal and impossible spotlessness. The peo- 
ple in Catherine are of a hollow perfection. Tap 
them and they will break like Christmas figurines 
— angels and Santa Clauses — of sugar and flour. 
Their sentiments are too correct; their wings too 
unruffled. At one point in the third act a truly 
human difficulty threatens to creep in. The Due 
de Coutras, having married his sistefs music 
teacher, feels the irk of his wife's well-intentioned 
but unmannerly family whom wealth and ease 
are beginning to corrupt. He criticises even her, 
the blameless Catherine (a modern and French 
Clarissa) in the remark that the heart, too, has 
its nerves. But the excessive sweetness of the 
first two acts settles down upon the last, and the 
issues of the situation are all shirked. Sire is the 
study of a beautiful, unreal sentiment. A faint 



7 o THE MODERN DRAMA 

whiff of lavender exhales from it. But the piece 
is over-elaborate for so frail a theme and, again, 
over-sweet. No, I prefer the Lavedan of the 
boulevards. He knows these amusement-seek- 
ers and ultra-moderns and old rakes. In their 
society he is unconstrained, copious and exact. 
It is from their lives that he has wrung his best 
work. A powerful, but not a notably fine nature, 
M. Lavedan is at his best when he observes and 
records. This he has done in his dialogues and 
in his three comedies. When he ceases to be ob- 
jective he becomes violent and sentimental by 
turns. Only in Le Gout du Vice has he added 
style and the fine play of intelligence to his work. 
Having found the genre of his last comedy, he 
should either cultivate it or return to the impas- 
sive chronicles of his earlier years. 

IV 

Mr. Bernard Shaw has recently told us, with 
characteristic vehemence and assurance, that M. 
Eugene Brieux (b. 1858) is the greatest French 
dramatist since the seventeenth century and the 
worthy successor of Moliere. In the same lively 
essay Mr. Shaw informs us that the French Alex- 
andrine is surpassed in worthlessness as a literary 
medium only by English blank-verse. So it is 



THE DRAMA IN FRANCE 71 

clear that Mr. Shaw claims the occasional privi- 
lege (a thing not unknown among men of genius) 
of talking quite at random. There are saner if 
quieter ways, surely, of honouring the arresting 
talent and vigorous productivity of M. Eugene 
Brieux. 

M. Brieux is the self-constituted censor of 
his age. Unlike the Roman poet, he does not 
scourge the manners of his contemporaries with 
laughter, however bitter, but with denunciation 
and harangue. In order to exercise his office in 
the theatre he has invented the formula of the 
didactic play. In act one the evil is exhibited 
through character and circumstance; in act two 
its consequences are set forth; in act three it is 
talked about. The three plays so widely read in 
America are but isolated specimens of the vast 
reformatory zeal of M. Brieux. In the course 
of the years he has denounced many abuses and 
instructed the public on many subjects; the pur- 
suit of mere art, popular education, parents-in- 
law, universal suffrage, heredity, charity, divorce, 
horse-racing, marriage, the administration of jus- 
tice, wet-nurses, venereal disease, eugenics, illicit 
love, the French character, religion. Is not this 
a prodigious list? I have not invented it, how- 
ever; it represents, literally and in chronological 



72 THE MODERN DRAMA 

order the subject-matter and polemic purpose of 
M. Brieux's plays from 1892 to 1907 — from 
Menages d' Artistes, presented humbly and after 
long struggles at the Theatre Libre to La Foi 
which saw the boards in London and Paris with 
all the pomp and circumstance of its author's 
international fame. 

I am not aware that the question has been 
asked: What, then, is M. Brieux's equipment 
for his task 4 ? On what is based the magnificent 
assurance of his criticism of society*? I find a 
partial answer, at least, to these questions in La 
Foi. For in this play M. Brieux discusses the 
supreme concern of man — the meaning of his ex- 
istence and his relation to the universe. 

With marvellous theatrical virtuosity Brieux 
has for once transferred his scene into the past. 
We are carried to ancient Egypt where the mys- 
terious Nile, on the authority of Pharaohs and 
priests, demands its annual tribute of human sac- 
rifice. Now there arises a man called Satni who 
has discovered that there are no gods. He calls 
to him the poor and disinherited of the land and 
tells them that by the mummery of fabled gods, 
kings and priests have oppressed them. He bids 
them be free henceforth of both hope and fear. 
The women mourn the loss of that heavenly kind- 



THE DRAMA IN FRANCE 73 

ness in which they had believed; Satni' s father 
dies cursing him because he has emptied the uni- 
verse of hope ; Satni himself, in a moment of com- 
passion for the poor, lends himself to the high- 
priest's trickery of false miracles. But he per- 
ceives the deeper bondage that will follow and 
dies with the declaration of the miracle's false- 
ness upon his lips. 

The fabric of the play is dazzling enough. Its 
purport is only too obvious. M. Brieux is of the 
opinion that, in the widest sense, there are no 
gods. He subscribes to the old-fashioned ration- 
alistic nonsense that religion was invented or, at 
least, fostered by priests and kings to keep the 
common folk in poverty and subjection. To 
slay the slain is as futile in the matter of argu- 
ment as of anything else. But it has never, ap- 
parently, occurred to M. Brieux that hunger and 
stripes are not needed to make us desire a divine 
rather than a dispeopled universe, and that his 
Pharaohs and high-priests, in moments of weari- 
ness and insight, felt that desire as profoundly 
as their most abject slaves. The unphilosoph- 
ical and unhistorical character of Satni and M. 
Brieux's attitude is as clear to us to-day as is the 
village free-thinker's of thirty years ago. 

It is in the hard and shallow glare of such 



74 THE MODERN DRAMA 

fundamental convictions that Brieux has called 
society to his judgment bar. His is a mind with- 
out a past. History, philosophy, literature, have 
taught him nothing. He relies on science and 
common-sense and reverses, in all his mental pro- 
cesses, the famous line of Verlaine : 

"Pas de couleur, rien que la nuance !" 

Now there are problems which science and com- 
mon-sense are sufficient to deal with. The evils 
of vicarious motherhood (Les Remplaf antes) 
and of excessive gambling {Result at des 
Courses) may, no doubt, be gradually legislated 
out of existence and no very worthy protest will 
arise. When, however, M. Brieux attacks prob- 
lems of greater complexity or subtlety, he pro- 
duces either helpless platitudes or — something 
worse. At the end of her acute and typical suf- 
ferings Blanchette, the girl educated above her 
station, is asked by her father: "And so people 
do wrong to give their children an education?" 
"No," Blanchette replies, "only they must also 
give them some way of using it and not want to 
make public officials of them." M. Brieux's con- 
clusions in the matter of charity are equally novel 
and illuminating: "You must love whom you 
desire to comfort; you must enclose your alms in 



THE DRAMA IN FRANCE 75 

a handshake." Compare with these lame plati- 
tudes John Galsworthy's treatment of the same 
problem in The Pigeon. In the answer, finally, 
which the physician in Les Avaries gives Georges 
Dupont to the question how the latter, some day, 
is to guide his son — in this answer, carefully 
pruned and bowdlerised in the American repre- 
sentation of Damaged Goods — M. Brieux sounds 
the depth of brutal and fatuous inadequacy. 

But his authority matches itself with even 
more delicate and difficult problems : The pursuit 
of art for its own sake is charlatanism and moral 
shabbiness; the average marriage of convenience 
is odious but better than spinsterhood or deprav-» 
ity; motherhood should be regulated; love should 
not be curbed by motives of prudence. To all 
these rules one may give a superficial assent. But 
I am always pursued by the suspicion that on 
every question — as, so clearly, on that of faith — 
a great deal is to be said of which Brieux is con- 
stitutionally unaware, and that the real prob- 
lem usually begins where his authoritative plati- 
tudes end. 

Many of the evils which he combats, more- 
over, are knit into the very texture of human 
character. Yet he appears to have a robust faith 
that it needs but his bustling exposures to make 



76 THE MODERN DRAMA 

men cease from the evil which they do. Not so. 
A merely positivistic and hence, despite all pre- 
tence, utilitarian ethics has never influenced man- 
kind. An ethics without foundation in meta- 
physics or religion never will. We need a nobler 
mandate to secure our obedience. A voice cry- 
ing on the market-place or from the stage: 
"There are no gods ! There is no divine sanction 
in the universe ! But curb your instincts and de- 
stroy abuses !" — such a voice, without persuasive- 
ness or sweetness or power will only alienate wis- 
dom and darken counsel. 

I have dwelt at some length on the didacticism 
of M. Bneux for two reasons: He is in danger, 
under the guidance of Mr. Shaw, o'f being taken 
seriously as a social philosopher; and because the 
negligible passions of a secularist preacher have 
irretrievably impaired the noblest original endow- 
ment for the art of the theatre that modern 
France has produced. 

M. Brieux began his career as a confirmed nat- 
uralist, fitted, beyond any other Frenchman to 
share and continue the triumphs of that order of 
art — the visible evocation of moral and material 
environments and the creation of character. The 
formula of the didactic play which he has in- 
vented and practised requires, in each case, a first 



THE DRAMA IN FRANCE 77 

act descriptive of the conditions concerning which, 
from about the middle of the second act on, M. 
Brieux desired to discourse. These first acts are 
in their sober objectivity a series of admirable tri- 
umphs. The symbolist charlatans in Menages 
d' Artistes, the peasants and their world in Blan- 
chette, the moral turmoil of cheap politics in 
UEngrenage, the village folk in Les Rempla- 
cantes, the milliners in La petite Amie\ — these 
are unsurpassable in reality, convincingness and 
power. Here are scenes and characters which 
any dramatist might envy. But as M. Brieux's 
career has progressed these studies in reality have 
become fewer and more superficial; the tide of 
mere words has risen, and at the very height of 
their dramatic passion his characters have begun 
to break out into polemic generalisations. Nor 
were the gifts of the naturalist his only ones. In 
he Berceau (1898) he treated, five years before 
M. Hervieu, the precise theme of the latter's Le 
Dedale, Without having recourse to the violent 
incidents that disfigure M. Hervieu's play, by 
sheer power of analysing the most delicate con- 
flicts, moral and nervous, he achieves a truth to 
which there is, for once, no possible answer. 
Only, Hervieu's play is a play throughout; Brieux 
talks for an act and a half about that which, as 



78 THE MODERN DRAMA 

an artist, he has so brilliantly and completely set 
forth. 

A few times only in his long and busy career 
a spirit of artistic repose has stolen over M. 
Brieux's restless mind. In La Couvee (1893), 
La petite Amie (1902), and Les Hannetons 
(1906), he has respected the objectivity of the 
art of the drama and written entire plays. La 
Couvee is a domestic drama, quiet, delicate and 
moving. The Graindor children have been 
spoiled by their mother's selfish love; the father's 
authority has been thwarted by sentimentality and 
cajolery. Now the boy and girl have grown up. 
The boy has been ruined by indulgence; the girl 
is safely married, but Mme. Graindor is jealous 
of her son-in-law and kindly enough but relent- 
lessly rules the homeless dwelling of the young 
couple. The husband, with the co-operation of 
his father-in-law, however, asserts the independ- 
ence of his household. Auguste Graindor goes to 
Africa and the parents are left alone. "The 
brood has grown up; the little ones fly from the 
nest." The sadness and the power of man's com- 
mon lot are in the play. 

La petite Amie is a tragedy. Two amiable 
souls, devoted to each other, are quite literally 
forced out of existence by the rancorous ambi- 



THE DRAMA IN FRANCE 79 

tion and impenetrable worldliness of the youth's 
father. One door of hope after another closes. 
The evil of fate is inherent in the characters and 
in the social structure. These characters, espe- 
cially M. and Mme. Logerais, are permanent ad- 
ditions to one's world of imaginative realities. 

I am almost tempted to call Les Hannetons 
Brieux's masterpiece. It is assuredly his most 
finished play. The situation, that of a man 
dominated through weakness, habit, nervousness, 
by a worthless woman, is pitiful and sordid 
enough. Nor does anything happen. Pierre 
thinks, for a space, that he has escaped the yoke; 
then bows his head again in fatalistic submission. 
The bitter comedy — full of a harsh but abun- 
dant comic power — ends where it began. But the 
thing is done to the life; the inevitable details 
are etched as with acid upon the brain. It is 
a "slice of life" presented in the simple and aus- 
tere fashion of the great Germanic naturalists, 
tempered by the wit and ease and mobile energy 
of French art. 

The literary character and career of M. Brieux 
illustrate the chariness of nature. So vast an ex- 
penditure of power; such broken and fragmen- 
tary results! In a more reposeful and less in- 
quisitive age he would have fashioned, as an ar- 



80 THE MODERN DRAMA 

tist should. Or else, gifted with a subtler and 
more flexible intelligence, he would have seen 
that art, even were one to grant it the mission of 
practical influence, must exercise that influence by 
implication, by creation alone. He was called to 
be the glory of the French stage; he has sold his 
birthright for a handful of ephemeral half-truths. 

That elegant and reserved artist M. Paul Her- 
vieu (b. 1857) is often mentioned side by side 
with Brieux. No two dramatists could, in real- 
ity, present sharper points of difference. M. 
Brieux is robust and prodigal; M. Hervieu, deli- 
cate and frugal. Their names have been coupled 
because they are both interested in ideas; but M. 
Brieux's ideas are limited to the sociological po- 
lemics of his time; Hervieu is interested in those 
moral conceptions which form the manners and 
dictate the laws of men. 

Around such ideas he has fashioned plays that 
are unparalleled in their spareness and concision. 
He has eliminated from them all elements that 
do not immediately further or illustrate his cen- 
tral and controlling thought. With the most 
conscious deliberation he denies himself many of 
the richest qualities of the modern playwright's 
work : moral and material density of milieu ; com- 



THE DRAMA IN FRANCE 81 

pletely embodied characters ; action that eddies in 
the stream of reality. Milieu, character and ac- 
tion, on the contrary, appear only in so far as 
they serve to express the dominant idea which 
the play is to drive home. His people, in the 
throes of their particular crises, are exhibited as 
absorbed by these alone, and are suddenly de- 
prived — unnaturally but, granting the method, 
logically — of all other interests, appetites, pas- 
sions, hopes. 

There can be little doubt but that in M. Her- 
vieu's creative process, the moral idea always pre- 
cedes both fable and character. It is, in truth, 
the ideas that build the plays. Hence their 
structure is logical, almost abstract. Their rela- 
tion to the vast welter of reality is like that born 
by geometry to the concrete phenomena of space. 
M. Hervieu does not even spare us the quod erat 
demonstrandum of Euclid. For each play ends 
with a final iteration of the moral truth so preg- 
nantly announced in the exact expressiveness of 
his titles. M. Hervieu's rigorous methods are 
illustrated in a very curious and interesting way 
by some of these endings. Les Paroles restent 
(1892) closes as follows: 

Mme. de Sabecourt: Ah, words, — they flutter away. 
Ligeuil: Not so. Words remain. 
The Doctor: And they kill! 



82 THE MODERN DRAMA 

Which is precisely the truth that the play was 
written to prove. Again: The last speech of 
La Course du Flambeau (1901) is the tragic cry 
of Sabine Revel: "For my daughter's sake I have 
killed my mother." And that every woman, 
given a cruel conflict of interests would do so 
is the play's point. Connais-toi (1909) finally, 
which expresses, in so masterly a way, the dis- 
harmony between the emotional gestures forced 
on us by a romantic civilisation and our real feel- 
ings, ends thus: 

General Siberan: Yesterday I would have deemed my 
friend [who has forgiven his erring wife] abject and 
grotesque. 

Clarisse: And were you a better man yesterday? 

General Siberan: I knew myself less well. 

Clarisse: Ah, who knows himself? 

M. Hervieu's technique, then, has the severe 
beauty of the abstract. He sacrifices, I fear, a 
higher and richer beauty. But it is not the 
critic's business to quarrel with an artist's chosen 
methods, only with the artist's disloyalty to them. 
Such disloyalty is rare in M. Hervieu's work. 
Only now and then may one detect — as in the 
romantic accidents in the fourth act of La Course 
du Flambeau or the mechanism on which the ac- 
tion of Le Rcveil hinges — an unscrupulous eager- 



THE DRAMA IN FRANCE 83 

ness to point the moral sharply. Of adornment 
M. Hervieu is never eager. He is the ascetic 
servant of moral ideas. 

I hasten to dispose of the one adverse criticism 
which the workmanship of this sane and admir- 
able artist can never wholly escape. His dia- 
logue is often tortured and often extravagant. A 
rather sober young financier and manufacturer is 
made to say to the young woman who has just 
accepted him: "You make me mad for joy; I 
would like to fall on my knees and cry out my 
happiness" (La Course du Flambeau). "Make 
me to know," says a man to a woman in Le 
Reveily "every shadow that may appear under 
your brow, in order that I may obliterate it gently 
with my kisses." In Connais-toi a suspected wife 
says to her husband: "You may bump my skull 
against the wall and you will make no further ex- 
planations spurt forth." A close thinker, a not- 
able artist in the structure of his work, M. Her- 
vieu seems to lack the narrower sense for style 
as a fine adaptation of verbal means to ends. It 
is but just to add that in his latest play Baga- 
telle (1912) the dialogue shows greater modera- 
tion and dignity. 

The chief plays of M. Hervieu may be divided 
into three groups: those in which he seeks to il- 



84 THE MODERN DRAMA 

lustrate universal moral truths; those in which he 
attacks a false moral idea embodied in an unjust 
law; those in which he dissects the romantic tra- 
ditions of our emotional life. 

To the first group belong Les Paroles restent, 
La Course du Flambeau, and he Dedale. Les 
Paroles restent relates the story of a slander in- 
nocently set afloat. The lie corrupts and cor- 
rodes the social existence and spiritual peace of 
several lives and, in the end, quite literally slays. 
f Le Dedale seeks to translate into an overwhelm- 
ingly compelling action-^an action which, un- 
happily, flares into melodrama in the fifth act — 
the moral impossibility of divorce, if there be a 
child. But La Course du Flambeau is the most 
notable drama in this group. Sabine Revel, a 
widow of thirty-six, lives with her mother Mme. 
Fontanes upon whom she is economically depend- 
ent, and her daughter Marie-Jeanne. Early in 
the first act an old friend of the family announces 
the theme in speaking to Sabine: "You do not 
know all your worth as a mother. And you will 
never know, I trust, the slightness of your worth 
as a daughter. Such truths are not learned when 
life is quiet and harmonious, but amid violent 
trials and bitter cries." Then the illustrative ac- 
tion sets in. Sabine sends away beyond recall 



THE DRAMA IN FRANCE 85 

the man she loves because she will not rob Marie 
of her entire love and care until the latter no 
longer needs them. Scarcely has Stangy gone 
than Marie announces her betrothal to Didier 
Maravon. Sabine has thrown away her future in 
vain. Four years of happy marriage pass for 
Marie when Didier finds himself ruined. His 
honour is unimpaired but he needs three hundred 
thousand francs to settle with his creditors and 
regain his financial stability. Sabine appeals to 
her mother. But the refusal of Mme. Fontanes 
is unconditional. She will neither impoverish 
her daughter, nor break the promise given to her 
dead husband not to alienate his hard-earned 
capital. Marie, in her despair, actually re- 
proaches Sabine for not having married Stangy, 
and forces her to write to him to America for 
help. Delay follows delay. Sabine attempts 
forgery but is unsuccessful. Marie's health 
breaks down. She is ordered to the Engadine, but 
the doctor warns Sabine that Mme. Fontanes, 
who has a lesion of the heart, must not risk that 
altitude. Mme. Fontanes, ignorant of her dan- 
ger and irritated at Sabine's maternal egotism, in- 
sists on either keeping Sabine with her or mak- 
ing the journey. Sabine, rather than see her place 
near her child taken by a nurse, consents to Mme. 



86 THE MODERN DRAMA 

Fontanes going. In the Swiss hotel Stangy ap- 
pears, married alas, but wealthy and full of his 
old kindness. He offers Didier a position in 
America which the latter and Marie joyfully ac- 
cept. Greatly and passionately Sabine pleads 
with her daughter not to leave her. But Marie 
follows her husband. The tragic woman turns 
to her mother: "Mother, I have only you; I have 
never had any one but you!" And Mme. Fon- 
tanes falls dead. The play is almost unbearably 
poignant. For the idea presented with so much 
power, if with some exaggeration, is one which 
cuts at the root of our pretensions and of our self- 
esteem. 

The moral idea which, crystallised in custom 
and law, M. Hervieu has most bitterly attacked, 
is that of the final dominance of the man in mar- 
riage. In Les Tenailles (1895) an< ^ La Lot de 
rhomme (1897) he shows two marriages, both ir- 
retrievably ruined: one by a lack of sympathy 
and affection; one by the husband's flagrant in- 
fidelity. Yet neither of these marriages could be 
dissolved according to the then law of France. 
That law, by giving the power of ultimate deci- 
sion to the man alone, imprisons Irene Fergan in 
Les Tenailles and condemns Laure de Raguais in 
La Lot de Vhomme to an even more shameful 



THE DRAMA IN FRANCE 87 

bondage by demanding for her husband's indis- 
putable misdeed a kind of proof impossible to 
obtain. Both marriages could, of course, have 
been dissolved had the two men been willing to 
lend their aid to the necessary steps. At this 
point, however, enters the characteristically 
French conception of marriage as primarily a so- 
cial institution and hardly at all as a union of 
free personalities. Fergan and Raguais, though 
calmly convinced that marriage has ceased to 
mean anything to them personally, refuse to en- 
visage the possibility of divorce. They are un- 
willing to incur the moral, material and social 
diminution of their power and status which di- 
vorce would entail. One can, at least, they 
agree, keep one's personal dignity and present an 
uncrumbled social fagade to society. It is against 
this conception of marriage that, in the last analy- 
sis, M. Hervieu directs his weapons. And he is 
at no loss to show, with the full brilliancy of his 
execution, the evil and the sorrow that arise from 
the pressure of such meaningless bondage. It is 
to be remembered, on the other hand, that mar- 
riage, however high and free its original motives, 
has a habit, in this work-a-day world, of becom- 
ing an institution into which are inextricably 
knotted all the strands that bind men and women 



88 THE MODERN DRAMA 

to their kind. Hence its dissolution may be, in 
the totality of consequences, more widely tragic 
than even a hunger of the heart. 

To views of this character M. Hervieu has 
come very close in Le Reveil (1905) and Con- 
nais-toi (1909). These two plays belong, of 
course, to the latest and, I suspect, the final period 
of his development — the anti-romantic. It is not 
a false or pinchbeck romance that M. Hervieu 
deprecates, but two notions, both Christian and 
romantic^ and both deeply rooted in the conscious- 
ness of Western society — the beauty of romantic 
passion, the nobility of romantic honour. Rapt 
to their heights of passionate enchantment Therese 
Megee and Prince Jean in Le Reveil are made 
suddenly to feel the touch of our real destiny 
and of our real duties. And at that touch the 
enchantment vanishes. At once they see each 
other and their passion in the light of common 
day and it falls away from them like an outworn 
garment. In Connais-toi, by a quieter and more 
masterly course of dramatic reasoning, General 
Siberan is brought to see that beyond the tradi- 
tional notions of romantic honour and revenge 
there watches in the human heart a better and 
more patient vision. M. Hervieu's last play 
Bagatelle (1912) is larger in spirit and mellower 



THE DRAMA IN FRANCE 89 

than any of these. Its theme is the vanity of all 
mere vanities; its warning that we curb the errors 
of our own inconstant hearts. 

Twice only has M. Hervieu turned aside from 
the exposition of moral ideas: once in his his- 
torical play Theroigne de M eric our t (1902), and 
once in that very skilful but somewhat factitious 
display of stage-craft VEnigme (1901). In the 
remaining eight plays the moral conception is su- 
preme. Nor need it surprise even the non-Latin 
student of the drama that six of these eight plays 
deal with adultery. For around the relations of 
the sexes in marriage are gathered many of those 
fundamental impulses which guide our opinions 
and our conduct. Nevertheless I cannot believe 
that the name of a great master will be perma- 
nently given to one whose intensity of moral in- 
sight is won at the cost of such vast exclusions. 
But that intensity of insight is his, and a power 
of reasoning in dramatic form analogous to Dry- 
den's power of reasoning in poetic form. To the 
French playwright, as to the English poet, were 
given energy and intellectual intensity ; to neither, 
that larger vision that sees life not only steadily 
but sees it whole. 



go THE MODERN DRAMA 



M. Jules Lemaitre (b. 1853) is not a member 
of any school or movement ; he pleads for no defi- 
nite ideas, for no special view of life. Even his 
technique recalls, at times, the older procedures 
of Augier and Dumas fits. He is not even afraid 
to close a play by means of the quite vicious trick 
of a sudden turn in the psychology of his char- 
acters, as witness the endings of Revoltee (1889) 
and of UAge difficile (1895). ^ n a word, his 
methods are eclectic. The great critic, the wise 
and exquisite master of Les Contemporains, 
stands above the literature which he has described 
so incomparably — "the intelligent, restless, mad, 
sombre, unguided literature of the second half of 
the nineteenth century" x — with an air of friendly 
but serene detachment. He understands all the 
artistic battles of his time too well to be induced 
to serve under any standard. 

The individual note, however, which M. Le- 
maitre has contributed to the drama of his period 
is that of a sane and liberal humanity. His is 
neither the contemptuous tolerance of Lavedan 
nor the noisy Puritanism of Brieux. A spirit that 
has dwelt imaginatively in all times and in all 
literatures is incapable of either extreme. Hence 

iLes Contemporains. Vol. I, p. 239. 



THE DRAMA IN FRANCE 91 

the surface of his dramatic work is never hard 
and brittle but always suffused with the warm 
glow of life. His understanding charity em- 
braces the "fault" of Mme. de Voves in Revolt ee 
and the almost attractive corruption of Yoyo — 
significant syllables! — in L'Age difficile, as well 
as the antics of the amusing players in Flipote 
(1893). Life having been in all ages a matter 
so incalculable and mysterious, our vices and our 
virtues being equally immemorial, M. Lemaitre 
does not feel that he can afford a vain severity. 
He understands his people; that is enough. I do 
not wish to convey the impression that M. Le- 
maitre has not his moral preferences or fails to 
see that the practical business of the world needs 
definite moral adjustments. He has expressed 
himself unmistakably to that effect through the 
withering portrait of a political opportunist and 
self-seeker in Le Depute Leveau (1890). 

He has concentrated all the most charming 
qualities of his dramatic talent in Le Pardon 
(1895). The play has three full-sized acts, ob- 
serves the unity of place, and has only three char- 
acters — the smallest number in any modern 
drama. It follows that, in a sense, the play is 
really all talk, but that talk was written by one 
of the major prose artists of French litera- 



92 THE MODERN DRAMA 

ture and, furthermore, reveals M. Lemaitre as a 
psychologist equal in acuteness and delicacy to 
any of his period. The theme of the play is, I 
had almost said inevitably, that of marital infi- 
delity, around which, despite M. Brieux's denial 
in La Francaise, the interest of French society 
and literature so largely turns. Suzanne, conven- 
tionally married oft at eighteen, is left to herself 
too much in the enforced idleness of the modern 
woman. Her husband Georges, though exclu- 
sively devoted to her, is often absent in the pur- 
suit of his affairs. In her idleness and loneliness 
Suzanne slips into a loveless intrigue. Georges 
discovers it, drives her out, and leaves to take a 
position in the factory of a former playmate's hus- 
band. Therese, his old friend, now secretly sum- 
mons Suzanne to her home (where the action of 
the play is laid) and by a train of very fine psy- 
chological reasoning which reveals Georges' most 
intimate desires to himself, persuades him to par- 
don his wife. To pardon her! There lies the 
difficulty. She cannot teach him to forget. He 
torments Suzanne with questions, unworthy sus- 
picions and cruel innuendoes. The memory of 
the tremendous physical fact is like an inexpug- 
nable poison in his blood. His single consolation 
is in his walks with Therese, in whom he con- 



THE DRAMA IN FRANCE 93 

fides, who consoles him, and who, alas, has al- 
ways loved him. The result is only too natural 
and Suzanne is clearly enough instructed when 
Georges, no longer upbraiding her or torturing 
himself, exclaims: "Let us not be dramatic and 
sensitive. That's the mistake!" She does not 
feel that she has the right to reproach him; but 
she turns bitterly upon Therese. Poor Therese, 
however, has discovered by this time that Georges 
does not really love her; that it was his wounded 
love for his wife that threw him into her arms. 
She expiates her wrong by this humiliating con- 
fession and leaves Georges and Suzanne alone. 
And now ^ Georges has searched his heart and 
discovered that the keenest sting of Suzanne's un- 
faithfulness was to his outraged male vanity. 
That sting is now blunted, that vanity is now as- 
suaged. They are both miserable sinners, and in 
the recognition of their common frailty may love 
each other again. The psychology is exquisite, 
the dialogue of an extreme and plangent beauty. 
The play rises beyond argument and analysis to 
a sad vision of the heart of man. We are not as- 
sured that Georges and Suzanne will be happy; 
we have only felt that they are human and sin- 
cere. 

M. Lemaitre's range of subject-matter has 



94 THE MODERN DRAMA 

been wide and he has written plays of very vary- 
ing moods. Marriage blanc (1891) is a study 
in morbid psychology flooded with that dry, hard 
sunshine which invalids watch in the South of 
France; Flipote is a satiric comedy which one 
might almost call high-spirited; UAge difficile is 
a satiric treatment of a sufficiently tragic subject 
— the loneliness of age. But here, as elsewhere, 
the wise and tender humanity of M. Lemaitre 
sounds its clarifying and reconciling note. 

His activity as a dramatist has been circum- 
scribed rather narrowly, nor has it ever reached a 
very large public. Its qualities of ease and grace 
and philosophic temperateness make one regret 
that it is not the drama rather than politics that 
has robbed the world of several volumes by the 
greatest of the living critics of literature. 1 

Beautifully written dialogue and a mellow hu- 
manity ally the dramas of M. Maurice Donnay 
(b. 1859) to those of M. Jules Lemaitre. To 
these qualities M. Donnay adds an almost lyric 
note of speech and — in the majority of his plays 
— the best structural technique on the French 
stage. M. Donnay has found it possible to dis- 

1 Now, alas, no longer among the living. But these pages 
may stand as I wrote them. 



THE DRAMA IN FRANCE 95 

pense wholly with plot, with artificial rearrange- 
ment of events, with mere cleverness of combina- 
tion. Like the Germanic playwrights, he simply 
lets life unfold itself. The situations in his plays 
are states of soul and these merge into each other 
according to the succession of reality, not accord- 
ing to the pattern of the theatre. /_ Even when 
pleading for an idea, his concern for it is a mar- 
vel of discretion. >The play is over before his 
process of insensible persuasion becomes retro- 
spectively clear. 

His subject is love — modern love. Of its 
troubles, its difficulties, its tragedies, he is as 
acutely aware as M. de Porto-Riche. But to him 
— and in this he differs from the older dramatist 
— its delights and memories appear the fairest 

"Part of our lives' unalterable good." 

Neither his attempts at Aristophanic satire nor his 
criticisms of a depraved society contribute so rare 
and individual a note to the modern French 
drama as does the haec olim meminisse juvat 
which vibrates in the passion of Amants (1895), 
V Autre Danger (1905), and even, at its close, 
of Les 'Eclair euses (1913). 

I am tempted to call Amants a modern Romeo 
and Juliet. It is easy to anticipate the answer: 



96 THE MODERN DRAMA 

A very modern Romeo and Juliet indeed! No 
doubt. Yet one might easily indicate the theme 
of the two plays in the same words : Two human 
beings who love each other utterly are separated 
by social and moral barriers peculiar to their time 
and place and character. Shakespeare's young 
Italians die; M. Donnay's modern French lovers 
separate and each marries some one else. Yet I 
am convinced, paradoxical as it may seem, that 
Claudine Rozay and Vetheuil had a far deeper 
capacity for tragic grief than those young amor- 
ists of the Renaissance. They seem grey enough 
by comparison. No Shakespeare has lent them 
the divine energy of his verse ; they are intelligent 
members of a highly complex society which fur- 
nishes them with duties and restraints. A dagger 
and a tomb are fine properties with which to make 
a brave show on the stage of this world. But 
that brief and almost harsh farewell which Clau- 
dine and Vetheuil say to each other by the shores 
of the Mediterranean has the high and tragic 
beauty of all entire sincerity of suffering. That, 
after an interval of time, these lovers can meet 
again with a sad equanimity and that each can 
pursue his way does not cheapen them when 
rightly thought upon. The best that was in each 
was given to the other. Time could not rob them 






THE DRAMA IN FRANCE 97 

of their past. And it is braver to live than to 
die : more difficult to be than not to be. 

A wise and noble resignation to the inevitable 
rather than a vain striving and crying is char- 
acteristic of M. Donnay's people. Consider the 
fate of Claire Jadain in V Autre Danger. Her 
husband is an impossible person — self-opinion- 
ated, tyrannical, meanly envious. For four years 
the love of Freydieres compensates her for all the 
sterile spaces of her past. Though their love 
must live a shadowy existence, since her maternal 
duties bind her to her home, it has come to mean 
to her the whole of life. Then comes, by imper- 
ceptible degrees that "other danger" which, de- 
spite the innumerable French studies of passion, 
is here pointed out for the first time. Claire's 
daughter Madeleine has become a woman in the 
four years, and Madeleine loves Freydieres. At 
her first ball the young girl hears an evil whisper 
coupling the names of Freydieres and her mother. 
It is like a death blow to her white soul. And it 
is evident to Claire that only by a complete an- 
nihilation of self can she give the lie to the ru- 
mour and — in the truest sense — save her child's 
life and the sacredness of her own motherhood. 
She addresses herself to the terrible task of re- 
vealing to Freydieres (what she has never yet 



98 THE MODERN DRAMA 

dared to admit even to herself) that he, too, loves 
Madeleine. "I ought to have foreseen that some 
day Madeleine would be eighteen; but one never 
thinks of that other danger." Freydieres strug- 
gles against the spiritual monstrousness of the 
situation, but Claire sends Madeleine to him. 
Silence and resignation are her portion. The 
closest observation went to the making of the 
play, the unravelling of almost invisible psychical 
threads. A coarse hand would have made the 
fable revolting. It is beautiful and tragic here. 
M. Donnay's latest play, which served to in- 
augurate a new Parisian theatre — La Comedie 
Marigny — depicts the very advanced feminists 
of the French capital. These ladies (Les Eclair- 
euses) are extremely alive nor are they without 
many admirable traits. Indeed there is no limit 
to M. Donnay's generosity to them. The pro- 
tagonist of the play and chief practical supporter 
of Vecole feministe is Mme. Jeanne Dureille who 
gets a divorce from her husband simply because 
the social male cannot strip himself of those au- 
thoritative airs which society has so long accorded 
him. Jeanne now lives in complete devotion to 
the Cause. But gradually and by imperceptible 
degrees a curious shadow steals over her inner life. 
And, in the end, there flickers from that shadow 



THE DRAMA IN FRANCE 99 

— a light. She really left her husband because, 
in the obscure hiding-places of the heart, she 
loved Jacques Leholloy, She gives herself to 
him and finally, amid the inevitable annoyances 
of life, flees to the shelter of his home and love. 
This household will be a very modern one, no 
doubt; Jacques is a feminist himself. But M. 
Donnay at least permits one to suspect that many 
traditional elements will gently steal back into 
this modern menage. For Jacques admits that 
the crude radicalism of nineteen hundred is no 
longer his. It is now nineteen hundred and thir- 
teen. And Jeanne comes to him for the oldest 
and best reason of all — seeking a friend, indeed, 
but also a husband and protector. 

It is the engaging sincerity of M. Donnay that 
makes him one of the most delightful of modern 
dramatists. His observation is honest and exact. 
Nor, granting its fundamental artifice, is it easy 
to praise too highly the eloquent modulations of 
his prose. His work is not that of a very great 
spirit but of a gifted and kindly gentleman who 
understands his fellow-creatures well enough to 
forgive them, invariably — for what they are. 



ioo THE MODERN DRAMA 

VI 

From this interpretative description of the 
chief playwrights of modern France and of their 
work, several significant facts, I trust, appear at 
once: This drama is based upon an observation 
that is often very exact within its limits but, ex- 
cept for occasional acts and scenes by M. Brieux, 
neither many-sided nor solid. The life it treats 
is, as a rule, the life of those who need neither 
toil nor spin. The common people, the middle 
classes, are left, once more except by M. Brieux, 
almost in silence. Yet even the life of these ad- 
mirable idlers is not touched at very many points, 
and one's final impression of them is that of crea- 
tures of but two dimensions. Love and passion 
do, no doubt, play a very large part in life, espe- 
cially in such lives. But these elegant and inter- 
esting persons must, after all, have had a hundred 
other concerns, a hundred other contacts with real- 
ity. This criticism is not made in the service of 
a cheap moral rigidness. The weakness of this 
drama is not in what it gives, but in what it fails 
to give. Life in it is reduced to a few terms and 
these terms are far too often the same. A great 
and full-bodied art is more inclusive. Emma 
Bovary had her affairs too, and these affairs were 



THE DRAMA IN FRANCE 101 

decisive factors in her fate. But that fate and 
life was magnificently founded in time and place 
and those humble but enduring things and activi- 
ties that form the dense texture of human exist- 
ence. Nor is that tenuousness of representation 
inherent in the form of the drama. A series of 
notable playwrights, from Becque to Galsworthy, 
have proven the contrary. 

Nor, finally, am I willing to believe that per- 
sons so extraordinarily intelligent and fine-fibred 
as the characters of Porto-Riche and Hervieu, Le- 
maitre and Donnay, are so utterly incapable of 
rising, if but for a moment, above the immediate 
illusions of life, or are so helplessly driven by 
the cruel flux of the phenomenal world. Do they 
never cast off that illusion*? Do they never feel 
some cool wind from the shores of a larger order ? 
Is a worldly resignation their last resort? Do 
they never rise beyond social values, and are 
truths of a merely social observation, however 
exquisitely subtle, their only refuge? A man, let 
us assume, is smitten by some cruel grief or dis- 
honour — Doncieres in Connais~toi, Georges in he 
'Passe. From the throbbing heat of his human 
habitation, from the faces worn with sorrow and 
shame, from the voices that sob or plead, he goes 
out into the open. The hills curve dark against 



102 THE MODERN DRAMA 

the sky, the ancient stones of the earth are patient 
under the stars. And the man, freed from the 
immediate passion of the hour, remembers the 
generations of the dead who, too, have tasted this 
pang, this shame, and he remembers the vastness 
of the eternal order. He may hope that in that 
order a divine vigilance is awake, or he may de- 
spair of such a hope. But he has shaken off, for 
one hour, the insistent illusions of mortality, and 
that hour will vibrate in his life and speech. 
Such an incident is typical, I take it, of a thou- 
sand. It cannot appear on the stage. ^But we 
may hear its liberating echo in the words of men. *^> 
They are freed from the laws of the transitory 
and united to the universe in which they live. 
That echo, that note of liberation, is never heard 
in the drama of contemporary France. Hence 
from a body of work so brilliant, so alluring, so 
intelligent and, within its own limits, so true, I 
turn with something not unlike relief to the more 
sombre but profounder dramatic literature of Ger- 
many and England. 



CHAPTER THREE 
THE NATURALISTIC DRAMA IN GERMANY 



The drama of modern Germany has broken more 
completely with the past than any other body of 
contemporary literature. To a recognition of the 
empty and meaningless artifice of the technique 
of Scribe, Sardou and even Dumas fits, the Ger- 
mans added a national antipathy to a form of art 
not only base but foreign, not only foreign but 
all-powerful. The society play of the older 
French school, transferred to German conditions 
by Paul Lindau, Oscar Blumenthal and others, 
monopolised the stage during the years that im- 
mediately followed the establishment of the em- 
pire. The sounding historical plays of Ernst von 
Wildenbruch brought a larger air into the weary 
disillusion that held the theatres. But here was, 
after all, no new art, no sense of liberation for 
the young revolutionists who crowded the Berlin 
cafes and prophesied a dawn of which no actual 

glimmer had yet appeared on the dull horizon. 

103 



104 THE MODERN DRAMA 

They had all, or nearly all, a pathetic faith in 
modern science. Hence they were forced, once 
more, to turn to France where alone, in the 
pseudo-naturalism of Zola, science had apparently 
created a literature in its own spirit. But this 
literature was neither new in the eighties, nor was 
it in dramatic form. The Goncourts, Zola, 
Daudet, had never succeeded in conquering the 
theatre for naturalism. The Scandinavian theatre 
was not yet a living force in Europe, nor could 
the young Germans have learned anything new 
from the methods of Ibsen. Hence, for some 
years, the drama hovered between two worlds, 
"one dead, the other powerless to be born." But 
even to the distant observer of to-day there floats 
a sense of the stir, the hope, the passionate and 
prophetic strife of those obscure days in which 
the germs of the modern drama were ripening in 
the souls of unguided and still inglorious youths. 
Societies were formed and programmes writ- 
ten and periodicals founded. The cry that arose 
with such generous earnestness from all these 
movements was for an art that should mirror, 
and thus implicitly interpret, the contemporary 
and the real — this immediate world whose sting 
and pang and savour and visible form are the 
actual contents of our experience and of our lives. 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY 105 

This world was not to be shattered and rebuilt 
according to the conventions of the theatre. Art 
was to triumph over itself, to transcend itself; to 
become, in the fullest sense, a vicarious experi- 
ence through which we might learn to pity the 
fate of others and to endure our own. 

It is abundantly clear that such an art — an 
art which was to create the complete illusion of 
reality — needed methods that had never, con- 
sciously, and purposefully at least, been prac- 
tised before. There are, no doubt, pages of 
human speech in Fielding to which the most con- 
sistent naturalist could add nothing. But that 
fact was quite unknown in Berlin in the winter 
of 1887, when Arno Holz and Johannes Schlaf 
withdrew to the frozen fields of a suburb and 
founded a new art. 

German criticism has dealt out scant justice to 
the major if not the senior member of this lit- 
erary firm: Arno Holz. But German criticism 
is at times petulant and finds it hard to keep 
its eye on the object and away from the man, the 
theory or the clique. It takes no very deep in- 
sight to understand the shortcomings of Arno 
Holz. He is cocksure, he is truculent, he is al- 
most ignorant. His theoretical writings make 
one wonder how so clever a man could have writ- 



106 THE MODERN DRAMA 

ten so foolishly. But there dwells in him a fresh 
dexterity of literary technique that amounts to 
genius. There is no species of writing that he 
has not touched; there is none that he has not 
adorned. No, adorned is too cheap a word — 
rejuvenated, rather, and created anew! He 
snapped his fingers in the face of many pompous 
idols of the tribe and made possible the modern 
drama. 

The task he set himself was the representation 
of life through the authentic speech of men — ■ 
not speech rewritten and rearranged in its order, 
nor, above all, heard with the merely literary in- 
stinct, but the humble speech of our daily lives 
with its elisions, its hesitations and iterations, its 
half -articulate sounds and cries, but also with its 
sting and sob and clutch. The first experiments 
of Holz and Schlaf were sketches (published over 
the Norwegian pseudonym of Bjarne P. Holm- 
sen, in 1889) in which the new dialogue was sur- 
rounded by masses of rather thin narrative. Al- 
most immediately, however, they eliminated the 
narrative portions and produced the first con- 
sistently naturalistic play: Die Familie Selicke 

(1890). 

With the perspective of nearly a quarter of a 
century since the first performance of the play t 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY 107 

and a fair knowledge of what has since been 
written in dramatic form in France, in Germany 
and in England, I agree unhesitatingly with 
Arno Holz's assertion that here first and here only 
a new domain was won for the art of the theatre. 
There is no difference in kind, he rightly declared, 
between the dialogue of Schiller and the dialogue 
of Ibsen. Both are written literature, not speech 
overheard. I would not imply, as Holz did, the 
necessary superiority of the newer over the older 
art. But it was new. No speech so haunting 
in its utter reality had ever appeared — except in 
accidental fragments — on the stage or between 
the covers of a book. And that speech bit itself 
into mind after mind; it gave the creative im- 
pulse to a whole literature of uncommon beauty 
and power and volume. 

But Holz and Schlaf did not limit themselves 
to an exact imitation of the elements of speech. 
They also observed the inevitableness of its psy- 
chological succession. Hence the reality of their 
dialogue banished from Die Familie Selicke all 
factitious action. The play is, in the fullest pos- 
sible sense, a piece of life observed with stringent 
closeness and set down with austere veracity. 
There is but one scene for the three acts, the liv- 
ing-room of poor people; the action takes place 



io8 THE MODERN DRAMA 

within a few hours. The room is sharply etched 
in the stage directions; the people are completely 
visualised. If you met them on the stairs of a 
house in the north of Berlin, you would recog- 
nise them at once — the father, the mother, the 
two boys, the daughter and her sweetheart. The 
little that happens is neither new nor striking. 
Life and death and love appear in their imme- 
morial guise. A good deal of sordidness, a gleam 
of goodness and self-denial, souls warped by the 
wrongs of the world: what more does one want? 

"Sunt lacrymae rerum et nos mortalia tangunt." 

There are no rejected inheritances or sudden for- 
tunes, as there are even in Hervieu; no lost let- 
ters as in Pinero and Lemaitre; no swift trans- 
formations in the hearts and fates of men. There 
is, as Fromentin said of Rubens, "no pomp, no 
ornament, no turbulence, nor grace, nor fine cloth- 
ing, nor one lovely and useless incident." There 
is life. 

"And life, some think, is worthy of the Muse." 

It has been said that such art is merely photo- 
graphic. But the criticism is superficial. A 
photograph has neither movement nor expression ; 
it renders the mood of neither the world nor the 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY 109 

soul ; there is no laughter in it, no sob, no prayer. 
It gives a single gesture transfixed by a mechan- 
ism. It has been said, too, that such art lacks 
interpretative power. But the infinite, as Goethe 
saw, lurks in the finite, if we but pursue the finite 
far enough. To observe man and his life relent- 
lessly, to set down the results of such observation 
with complete sincerity, is to be sure, at last, to 
come upon those ultimate mysteries which escape 
the snares of circumstance and are free of the 
arbitrament of mortality. To such an interpre- 
tation of the world the finest validity belongs. 
To draw a moral, to preach a doctrine, is like 
shouting at the north star. Life is a vast and 
awful business. The great artist sets down his 
vision of it and is silent. There are neither so- 
cial panaceas nor short cuts to cheerful living in 
the Iliad or in Lear. Now it is the merit of the 
naturalistic drama of modern Germany — of the 
drama of Hauptmann and Halbe, of Hirschfeld 
and Schnitzler — to have set down a vision of life 
that coincides remarkably with the humble truth. 
Nothing that is human has been alien to its sight, 
to its compassion, to its power of representation. 
It has grappled with reality on closer terms than 
any other literature of which we have knowledge. 
Therein resides its power and, I believe, its per- 
manent value. And of this art the theory and 



no THE MODERN DRAMA 

the first complete example are due to Amo Holz 
and Johannes Schlaf. Holz showed his sketches 
and his play in manuscript to Gerhart Haupt- 
mann before the Silesian dramatist had written 
Before Dawn, and Hauptmann is the pre-emi- 
nent master of the modern German drama both 
in its naturalistic and in its neo-romantic phases. 
Hence, Die Familie Selicke was an artistic 
achievement of historic significance, and a de- 
scription of it the necessary prologue to the de- 
velopment in the art of the theatre with which 
this chapter deals 

II 

In one of his rare fragments of lyrical verse 
Gerhart Hauptmann (b. 1862) has described, 
with insight and exactness, his own character as 
a creative artist. "Let thy soul, O poet, be like 
an iEolian harp, stirred by the gentlest breath. 
Eternally must its strings vibrate under the 
breathing of the world's woe. For the world's 
woe is the root of our heavenward yearning. 
Thus will thy songs be rooted in the world's woe, 
but the heavenly light will shine upon their 
crown." In this view, it is clear, the artist is 
essentially passive. And so, in fact, the natural- 
istic artist must be. He must not break in upon 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY 111 

the vision of life; his imagination rounds out and 
completes; it does not change the reality which, 
experience furnishes. But that reality — so sensi- 
tively observed and so greatly rendered — has al- 
ways inspired Hauptmann with a boundless com- 
passion. To him the world's life has been the 
world's woe; his very austerity and apparent 
harshness pay tribute to the sacredness of human 
sorrow. Such a temperament adopted the tech- 
nique of the naturalistic drama not only as an 
artistic but as an ethical act. It sought the 
tragic beauty that is in truth and almost instinc- 
tively rejected all the traditional devices of 
dramaturgic technique. From such a point of 
view artifice is not only futile, it is wrong. 
There could be, in the drama of Hauptmann, no 
complication of plot, no culmination of the re- 
sultant struggle in merely effective scenes, no su- 
perior articulateness on the part of the charac- 
ters. There could be no artistic beginning, for 
life comes shadowy from life; there could be no 
artistic ending, for the play of life ends only in 
eternity. 

This view of the drama's relation to life leads, 
naturally, to the exclusion of many devices. 
Thus Hauptmann, unlike the playwrights of 
France, but like Ibsen and Galsworthy, avoids 



112 THE MODERN DRAMA 

the division of acts into scenes. The coming and 
going of characters has the unobtrusiveness but 
seldom violated in life; the inevitable artifice of 
entrance and exit is held within rigid bounds. In 
some of his earlier dramas he also observed the 
unities of time and place, and throughout his 
work practises close economy in these respects. 
It goes without saying that he rejects the mono- 
logue, the unnatural reading of letters, the 
raisoneur or commenting and providential char- 
acter, the lightly motivised confession — all the 
devices in brief, by which even Hervieu and 
Lemaitre, Wilde and Pinero, blandly trans- 
port information across the footlights, or 
unravel the artificial knot which they have 
tied. 

In dialogue, the medium of the drama, Haupt- 
mann adds to the reality of Holz a complete ef- 
fortlessness. Hence beside the speech of his char- 
acters all other dramatic speech seems conscious 
and merely literary. Nor is that marvellous 
veracity in the handling of his medium a mere 
control of dialect. Johannes Vockerat and 
Michael Kramer, Dr. Scholz and Professor 
Crampton, speak with a human raciness and na- 
tive truth not surpassed by the weavers or peas- 
ants of Silesia. Hauptmann has heard the in- 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY 113 

flections of the human voice, the faltering and 
fugitive eloquence of the living word, not only 
with his ears but with his soul. 

External devices necessarily contribute to this 
effect. Thus Hauptmann renders all dialect 
with phonetic accuracy and correct differentia- 
tion. In Before Dawn (1889) Hoffmann, Loth, 
Dr. Schimmelpfennig and Helen speak normal 
high German; all the other characters speak the 
Silesian except the imported footman Eduard 
who uses the Berlin dialect. In The Beaver 
Coat (1893) the various gradations of that dia- 
lect are scrupulously set down, from the impu- 
dent vulgarity of Leontine and Adelaide to the 
occasional consonantal slips of Wehrhahn. The 
egregious Mrs. Wolff, in the same play, cannot 
deny her Silesian origin. Far finer shades of 
character are indicated by the amiable elisions of 
Mrs. Vockerat, Senior, in Lonely Lives (1891), 
the recurrent crassness of Mrs. Scholz in The Re- 
conciliation (1890) and the solemn reiterations 
of Michael Kramer (1900). Nor must it be 
thought that such characterisation has anything 
in common with the set phrases of Dickens. 
From the richness and variety of German col- 
loquial speech, from the deep brooding of the 
German soul upon the common things and the 



114 THE MODERN DRAMA 

enduring emotions of life, Hauptmann has caught 
the authentic accents that change dramatic dia- 
logue into the speech of man. 

In the structure of his drama Hauptmann, 
again following and surpassing the theory and 
practice of Holz, met and solved an even more 
difficult problem than in the character of his dia- 
logue. He rejects the whole tradition of struc- 
tural technique. And he is able to do so by rea- 
son of his intimate contact with the normal truth 
of things. In life, for instance, the conflict of 
will with will, the passionate crises of human 
existence, are but rarely concentrated into a brief 
space of time or culminate in a highly salient sit- 
uation. Long and wearing attrition, and crises 
that are seen to have been such only in the retro- 
spect of calmer years, are the rule. Hence in- 
stead of effective rearrangement Hauptmann con- 
tents himself with the austere simplicity of that 
succession of action which observation really af- 
fords. The intrusion of a new force into a given 
setting, as in Lonely Lives, is as violent an inter- 
ference with the sober course of things as he ad- 
mits. From his noblest successes, The Weavers 
(1892), Drayman Henschel (1898), Michael 
Kramer (1900), Rose Bernd (1903), the arti- 
fice of complication is wholly absent. 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY 115 

It follows that his fables are simple and de- 
void of plot, that comedy and tragedy must in- 
here in character, and that conflict must grow 
from the clash of character with environment or 
of character with character in its totality. In 
other words: Since the unwonted and adven- 
turous are rigidly excluded, dramatic complica- 
tion can but rarely, with Hauptmann, proceed 
from action. For the life of man is woven of 
"little, nameless, unremembered acts" which pos- 
sess no significance except as they illustrate char- 
acter and thus, link by link, forge that fate which 
is identical with character. The constant and 
bitter conflict in the world does not arise from 
pointed and opposed notions of honour and duty 
held at some rare climacteric moment, but from 
the far more tragic grinding of a hostile environ- 
ment upon man or of the imprisonment of alien 
souls in the cage of some social bondage. 

These two motives, appearing sometimes sin- 
gly, sometimes blended, are fundamental to 
Hauptmann' s work. In The Reconciliation an 
unnatural marriage has brought discord and de- 
pravity upon earth ; in Lonely Lives a seeker after 
truth is throttled by a murky world; in The 
Weavers the whole organisation of society drives 
men to tragic despair; in The Beaver Coat the 



n6 THE MODERN DRAMA 

motive is ironically inverted and a base shrewd- 
ness triumphs over the social machine; in Rose 
Bernd traditional righteousness hounds a pure 
spirit out of life; and in Gabriel Schilling's 
Flight (written in 1906) Hauptmann returns to 
a favourite motive: Woman, strong through the 
narrowness and intensity of her elemental aims 
destroying man, the thinker and dreamer whose 
will, dissipated in an hundred ideal purposes, 
goes under in the unequal struggle. 

The fable and structure of Michael Kramer 
well illustrate Hauptmann's typical themes and 
methods. The whole of the first act is exposi- 
tion. It is not, however, the exposition of ante- 
cedent actions or events. It is wholly of char- 
acter. The conditions of the play are entirely 
static. Kramer's greatness of soul broods over 
the whole act from which his person is absent. 
Mrs. Kramer, the narrow-minded, nagging wife, 
and Arnold, the homely, wretched boy with a 
spark of genius, quail under that spirit. Michal- 
ine, the brave, whole-hearted girl, stands among 
these, pitying and comprehending all. In the 
second act one of Arnold's sordid and piteous mis- 
takes comes to light. An innkeeper's daughter 
complains to Kramer of his son's grotesque and 
annoyingly expressed passion for her. Kramer 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY 117 

takes his son to task and, in one of the noblest 
scenes in the modern drama, wrestles with the 
boy's soul. In the third act the inn is shown. 
Its rowdy, semi-educated habitues deride Arnold 
with coarse gibes. He cannot tear himself away. 
Madly sensitive and conscious of his final su- 
periority over a world that crushes him by its 
merely brutal advantages, he is goaded to de- 
struction. In the last act, in the presence of his 
dead son, Michael Kramer cries out after some 
reconciliation with the silent universe. The play 
is done and nothing has happened. The only ac- 
tion is Arnold's suicide and that action has no 
dramatic value. The significance of the play 
lies in the unequal marriage between Kramer and 
his wife, in Arnold's character — in the fact that 
such things are^ and that in our outlook upon the 
whole of life we must reckon with them. 

Hauptmann's simple management of a preg- 
nant fable may be admirably observed, finally, 
by comparing Lonely Lives and Rosmersholm 
(1886). Hauptmann was undoubtedly in- 
debted to Ibsen for his problem and for the main 
elements of the story : A modern thinker is over- 
come by the orthodox and conservative world in 
which he lives. And that world conquers largely 
because he cannot be united to the woman who 



n8 THE MODERN DRAMA 

is his inspiration and his strength. In handling 
this fable two difficult questions were to be an- 
swered by the craftsman: By what means does 
the hostile environment crush the protagonist*? 
Why cannot he take the saving hand that is held 
out to him 4 ? Ibsen practically shirks the answer 
to the first question. For it is not the bitter 
zealot Kroll, despite his newspaper war and his 
scandal-mongering, who breaks Rosmer's strength. 
It is fate, fate in the dark and ancient sense. 
"The dead cling to Rosmersholm 5, — that is the 
key-note of the play. The answer to the second 
question is interwoven with an attempt to ra- 
tionalise the fatality that broods over Rosmers- 
holm. The dead cling to it because a subtle and 
nameless wrong has been committed against 
them. And that sin has been committed by the 
woman who could save Rosmer. At the end of 
the second act Rebecca refuses to be his wife. The 
reason for that refusal, dimly prefigured, ab- 
sorbs his thoughts, and through two acts of con- 
summate dramaturgic suspense the sombre history 
is gradually unfolded. And no vague phrases 
concerning the ennobling of humanity can con- 
ceal the central fact: the play derives its power 
from a traditional plot and a conventional mo- 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY 119 

tive — crime and its discovery, sin and its retri- 
bution. 

In Lonely Lives the two questions apparently 
treated in Rosmersholm are answered, not in the 
terms of effective dramaturgy, but of life itself. 
Johannes Vockerat lives in the midst of the 
world that must undo him, subtly irritated by all 
to which his heart clings. Out of that world he 
has grown and he cannot liberate himself from 
it. His good wife and his admirable parents are 
bound to the conventional in no base or fanatical 
sense. He dare scarcely tell them that their pre- 
occupations, that their very love, slays the ideal 
in his soul. And so the pitiless attrition goes 
on. There is no action: there is being. The 
struggle is rooted in the deep divisions of men's 
souls, not in unwonted crime and plotting. And 
Anna Mahr, the free woman of a freer world, 
parts from Johannes because she recognises their 
human unfitness to take up the burden of tragic 
sorrow which any union between them must cre- 
ate. The time for such things has not come and 
may never come. Thus Johannes is left deso- 
late, powerless to face the unendurable emptiness 
and decay that lie before him, destroyed by the 
conflicting loyalties to personal and ideal ends 



120 THE MODERN DRAMA 

which are fundamental to the life of creative 
thought. 

Drama, then, which relies so little upon ex- 
ternal action, but finds action rather in "every 
inner conflict of passions, every consequence of 
diverging thoughts" must stress the obscurest ex- 
pression of such passions and such thoughts. 
Since its fables, furthermore, are to arise from the 
immediate data of life, it must equally empha- 
sise the significant factor of those common things 
amid which man passes his struggle. And so the 
naturalistic drama of Hauptmann and his school 
was forced to introduce elements of description 
and exposition usually held alien to the genre. 
JBriefly, it has dealt largely and powerfully with 
atmosphere, environment and gesture; it has ex- 
panded and refined the stage-direction beyond all 
precedent and made of it an important element 
of dramatic art. 

The playwrights of the middle of the last cen- 
tury who made an effort to lead the drama back 
to reality, knew nothing of this element. Nor 
have the masters of the contemporary stage in 
France adopted it. Augier does not even sus- 
pect its existence; in Robertson it is a matter of 
"properties" and "business." Any appearance of 
this kind Hauptmann avoids as do, after him, 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY 121 

Shaw and Galsworthy and Granville Barker. 
The play is not to remind us of the stage, but of 
life. A difference in vision and method difficult 
to estimate divides Robertson's direction: "Sam. 
(astonished L. corner)" from Hauptmann's: 
"Mrs. John rises mechanically and cuts a slice 
from a loaf of bread as though under the influ- 
ence of suggestion." Robertson indicates the 
conventionalised gesture of life; Hauptmann, its 
moral and spiritual density. 

The descriptive stage direction, effectively used 
by Ibsen, is further expanded by Hauptmann. 
But it remains impersonal and never becomes di- 
rect comment or even argument as in Shaw. It 
is used not only to suggest the scene but, above 
all, its atmosphere, its mood. Through it Haupt- 
mann shows his keen sense of the interaction be- 
tween man and his world and the high moral 
expressiveness of common things. To define the 
mood more clearly he describes the hour and the 
weather. The action of Rose Bernd opens on a 
bright Sunday morning in May; that of Dray- 
man Henschel during a bleak February dawn. 
The desperate souls in The Reconciliation meet 
on a snow-swept Christmas eve; the sun has just 
set over the lake in which Johannes Vockerat at 
last finds rest. In these indications Hauptmann 



122 THE MODERN DRAMA 

rarely aims at either irony or symbolism. He is 
guided by a sense for the probabilities of life 
which he expresses through such interactions be- 
tween the moods of man and nature as experience 
seems to offer. Only in The Maidens of the 
Mount has the suave autumnal weather a deeper 
meaning, for it was clearly Hauptmann's pur- 
pose in this play 

"To build a shadowy isle of bliss 
Midmost the beating of the steely sea." 

Hauptmann has also become increasingly ex- 
acting in the demand that the actor simulate the 
personal appearance of his characterT~as~ they 
arose in his imagination, and has visualised their 
minutest gestures with remarkable concreteness. 
His directions often tax the mimetic art of the 
stage to the very verge of its power. By means 
of them, however, he has placed within narrow 
limits the activity of stage-manager and actor. 
They are not his collaborators; they are his in- 
terpreters merely. He alone is the creator of 
his drama, and no alien factitiousness is allowed 
to obscure its final aim — the creation of living 
men. 

In the third act of The Rats (1911) the ex- 
stage-manager Hassenreuter is drawn by his 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY 123 

pupil, young Spitta, into an argument concern- 
ing the nature of tragedy. "Of the heights of 
humanity you know nothing," Hassenreuter 
hotly declares. "You asserted the other day that 
in certain circumstances a barber or a scrubwoman 
could as fitly be the subject of tragedy as Lady 
Macbeth or King Lear." To which Spitta 
calmly replies: "Before art, as before the law, 
all men are equal." From this doctrine Haupt- 
mann has never departed, although his interpre- 
tation of it has never been fanatical. Through- 
out his work, however, there is a careful disre- 
gard of several classes of his countrymen : the no- 
bility, the bureaucracy (with the notable excep- 
tion of Wehrhahn in The Beaver Coat), the capi- 
talists. He has devoted himself in his naturalis- 
tic plays to the life of the common people, of the 
middle classes and of creative thinkers. 

The delineation of all these characters has two 
constant qualities : objectivity and justice. The au- 
thor has not merged the sharp outlines of human- 
ity into the background of his own idiosyncrasy. 
These men and women are themselves. No trick 
of speech, no lurking similarity of thought, unites 
them to each other or to the mind that shaped 
them. The nearer any two of them tend to ap- 
proach a recognisable type, the more magnificently 



124 THE MODERN DRAMA 

is the individuality of each vindicated. The 
elderly middle-class woman, harassed by ignoble 
cares ignobly borne, driven by a lack of fortitude 
into querulousness, and into injustice by the self- 
ishness of her affections, is illustrated both by 
Mrs. Scholz and Mrs. Kramer. But, in the for- 
mer, bodily suffering and nervous terror have 
slackened the moral fibre, and this abnormality 
speaks through every word and gesture. Mrs. 
Kramer is simply average, with the tenacity and 
the corroding power of the average. 

Another noteworthy group is that of the three 
Lutheran clergymen : Kolin in Lonely Lives, Kit- 
telhaus in The Weavers, and Spitta, Senior, in 
The Rats. Kolin has the utter sincerity which 
can afford to be trivial and not cease to be lov- 
able ; Kittelhaus is the conscious time-server whose 
opinions might be anything; Spitta struggles for 
his official convictions, half blinded by the allure- 
ments of a world which it is his duty to denounce. 
Each is wholly himself; no hint of critical irony 
defaces his character; and thus each is able, im- 
plicitly, to put his case with the power inherent 
in the genuinely and recognisably human. From 
the same class of temperaments — one that he does 
not love — Hauptmann has had the justice to 
draw two characters of basic importance in 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY 125 

Lonely Lives. The elder Vockerats are exces- 
sively limited in their outlook on life. It is, in- 
deed, in its time and place, an impossible out- 
look. These two people have nothing to recom- 
mend them save their goodness, but it is a good- 
ness so keenly felt, so radiantly human, that the 
conflict of the play is deepened and complicated 
by the question whether the real tragedy be not 
the pain endured by these kindly hearts, rather 
than the destruction of their more arduous son. '^ 

All these may be said to be minor characters. 
Some of them are, in that they scarcely affect the 
fable involved. But in no other sense are there 
minor figures in Hauptmann's plays. A few 
lines suffice, and a human being stands squarely 
upon the living earth, with all his mortal per- 
plexities in his words and voice. Such charac- 
ters are the tutor Weinhold in The Weavers, the 
painter Lachmann in Michael Kramer, Dr. Boxer 
in The Conflagration (1901) and Dr. Schim- 
melpfennig in Before Dawn. 

In his artists and thinkers Hauptmann has il- 
lustrated the excessive nervousness of the age. 
Michael Kramer rises above it; Johannes Vock- 
erat and Gabriel Schilling succumb. And beside 
these men there usually arises the sharply real- 
ised figure of the destroying woman — innocent 



126 THE MODERN DRAMA 

and helpless in Kathe Vockerat, trivial and ob- 
tuse in Alwine Lachmann, or impelled by a de- 
vouring sexual egotism in Eveline Schilling and 
Hanna Elias. 

Hauptmann's creative power culminates, how- 
ever, as he approaches the common folk. These 
are of two kinds: the Berlin populace and the 
Silesian peasantry. The world of the former in 
all its shrewdness, impudence and varied lusts, 
he has set down with cruel and quiet exactness 
in The Beaver Coat and The Conflagration, 
Mrs. Wolff, the protagonist of both plays, rises 
into a figure of epic breadth — a sordid and finally 
almost tragic embodiment of worldliness and 
cunning. When he approaches the peasants of 
his own countryside his touch is less hard, his 
method not quite so remorseless. And thus, per- 
haps, it comes about, that in the face of these 
characters the art of criticism can only set down 
a confirmatory: "They are!" Old Deans in The 
Heart of Midlothian, Tulliver and the Dodson 
sisters in The Mill on the Floss, illustrate the na- 
ture of Hauptmann's incomparable projection of 
simple men and women. Here, in Dryden's 
phrase, is God's plenty. The morose pathos of 
Beipst {Before Dawn) ; the vanity and faithful- 
ness of Friebe {The Reconciliation); the sad 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY 127 

fatalism of Hauffe {Drayman Henschel) ; the in- 
stinctive kindliness of the nurse and the hu- 
morous fortitude of Mrs. Lehmann {Lonely 
Lives) ; the vulgar good nature of Liese Bansch 
{Michael Kramer) ; the trivial despair of Pauline 
and the primitive passion of Mrs. John {The 
Rats) ; the massive greatness of old Hilse's rock- 
like patience and the sudden impassioned pro- 
test of Luise {The Weavers); the deep trouble 
of Henschel's simple soul and the hunted purity 
of Rose Bernd — these qualities and these char- 
acters transcend the convincingness of mere art. 
Like the rain-drenched mould, the black trees 
against the sky, the noise of the earth's waters, 
they are among the abiding elements of a native 
and familiar world. 

Such is the naturalistic drama of Hauptmann. 
By employing the real speech of man, by em- 
phasising being rather than action, by creating 
the very atmosphere and gesture of life, it suc- 
ceeds in presenting characters whose vital truth 
achieves the intellectual beauty and moral en- 
ergy of great art. I can not sum up his work in 
its totality here. For Hauptmann is also a poet 
and thus the most distinguished figure in the neo- 
romantic movement in Germany. But by his 
work as a naturalist he has not only created a 



128 THE MODERN DRAMA 

new art; he has added unforgettable figures to 
the world of the imagination — figures that ally 
him to the great projectors of human character, 
to Fielding, to Thackeray, to Flaubert. 

Ill 

The very year (1889) m which Hauptmann 
inaugurated his great career with Before Dawn, 
the Lessing Theatre in Berlin achieved one of the 
most striking successes of the century with a play 
called Die Ekre. Its author was the East Prus- 
sian novelist, Hermann Sudermann (b. 1857) 
whose name, almost obscure until then, was soon 
to be known more widely than any German 
dramatist's since Kotzebue. His enemies have 
not spared him the withering comparison. For 
it is a notable fact that Sudermann whose work 
is often, in England and America, coupled with 
Hauptmann's, is almost totally discredited as a 
playwright in Germany and is frankly assigned, 
in most serious criticism, a station among the 
mere commercial purveyors to the popular stage. 
The naturalists, led by Hauptmann, have intro- 
duced into the German drama ideals of un- 
equalled stringency. No theatrical unveracit)^ in 
the dramatic treatment of life is tolerated by Ger- 
man criticism; no calculated concession to the 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY 129 

mob is pardoned. The commercial theatre and 
the art of the drama are rigidly kept apart. 
Hence no voice has, for some years, been raised 
for Sudermann. A criticism that detects a touch 
of artifice in Rose Bernd is not likely to be lenient 
toward the author of Heimat (1893) or Es lebe 
das Leben (1902). 

But if the foreign critic represents a kind of 
contemporaneous posterity, it is possible to take 
a far more moderate view of Sudermann's activ- 
ity as dramatist. He has undoubtedly retained, 
in many of his plays, the technique of Dumas 
fits and his contemporaries. His exposition is 
often shamelessly mechanical, his management of 
the fable adjusted not to the necessities of the 
situation but to the fancy of the audience; he 
uses the providential character — that French 
deus ex t machina — and does not shrink from 
wrenching the whole nature of man for the sake 
of an effective curtain. On the other hand it can 
be said that in many of his plays these artifices 
are much softened. They have been a tempta- 
tion to his feverishly restless temperament, but a 
temptation to which he has not always yielded. 
Nor must it be forgotten that into this discredited 
and rightly discredited mechanism of the stage 
he has almost always infused a probity of ob- 



130 THE MODERN DRAMA 

servation and a power of shaping character which 
are akin to the same qualities in his greater and 
more self-denying contemporaries. Even from 
amid the wretched clap-trap — the unnatural an- 
titheses, the cheap coincidences, the sudden for- 
tunes — of his first play arose the memorable char- 
acter of Alma Heinecke, that matchless daughter 
of the Berlin poor who presents her case with 
inimitable raciness and truth. 

Neither in his next play, Sodoms Ende 
(1890), nor in Heimat (1893), to which a grate- 
ful role has given international notoriety, nor in 
his later and lurid pictures of Berlin society, Es 
lebe das Leben (1902), Das Blumenboot (1906), 
Der gute Ruf (1912), is the best of Sudermann 
to be found. That best must be sought in an 
occasional comedy, and in many passages of those 
plays in which he draws sincerity and strength 
from his native earth — the bleak and storied shores 
of the Baltic Sea. 

The happiest of the comedies is Die Schmet- 
terlingsschlacht (1894). The protagonist of the 
play is Frau Hergentheim, the widow of a small 
government official. Her pension is ridiculous 
and she has three daughters whom she wishes to 
bring up properly and marry well. But bread 
is dear and so is oleomargarine, as she explains 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY 131 

in her admirable defence in the last act, and hun- 
ger is painful. There was a time, furthermore, 
when the children were small. And even now 
their ladylike earnings are wretched enough. 
But through hunger and humiliation Frau Her- 
gentheim has held fast to her ideal — the only one 
she knows — not to let her daughters lapse into 
an inferior social class. Her reward comes to 
her, but not until she has suffered all the bitter- 
ness which the situation holds. Beneath its light- 
ness of mood the play is a serious and arresting 
study, expressed through living characters, of that 
Moloch of the lower middle-classes — respectabil- 
ity. 

Sudermann's work, during the following six 
years, showed constant uncertainty and falseness. 
Only Fritzchen in Morituri (1896), a one-act 
tragedy of complete inevitableness rises above the 
glare and strain of his efforts. That better self 
of his which has never been quite blunted by haste 
and success reasserts itself in Johannisfeuer 
(1900). The scene of the play is once more 
Sudermann's homeland and one has a strong sense 
of the presence of the strange and ancient wild- 
ness of the Lithuanian country-side. There are 
coincidences, no doubt, and the dialogue is 
often enough pitched in a false and theatrical key 



132 THE MODERN DRAMA 

— though never in a falser key than would be 
held quite tolerable in Lavedan or Hervieu, in 
Jones and Pinero. But the reality of Georg and 
Marikke's tragic love is profoundly brought home 
to us, and Vogelreuter and Haffke are of a fine 
and true humanity. 

Berlin, the evil genius of his art, drew him once 
more (Es lebe das Leben). But in the very next 
year (1903) appeared the East Prussian comedy, 
Der Sturmgeselle Sokrates. The discussion of 
burning political and racial issues has served to 
obscure the value of this excellent play. Nor 
has the truth been admitted that Sudermann 
stands above these issues in an attitude of kindly 
and philosophic humanity. The very temperate 
satire of the play is directed against a group of 
elderly men, democratic idealists of 1848, whose 
occupation was taken from them and whose hopes 
were shattered by Bismarck and the establishment 
of the empire. Their cause is lost. But Hart- 
meyer, a born fanatic, will not admit it. He 
continues the secret society of the years of the 
revolution and carries with him, by main force, 
his old cronies, the grocer, the schoolmaster and 
the rabbi. A tragic awakening comes to him 
when he desires to initiate his sons and the son 
of his friend into the sacred mysteries of his old 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY 133 

political dreams. For to these youths the new 
order is a fact and an experience. Of Hart- 
meyer's older son Fritz it has made a socialist; 
of Reinhold, the younger, a chauvinist and a 
snob; the brilliant son of the rabbi explains to 
his father the harsh realities of social and pro- 
fessional discrimination which, under the empire, 
are still the portion of the Jew. Hartmeyer is, 
to be sure, won over in the end. But I detect in 
Sudermann' s final attitude a shadow of sympathy 
at least for the old democratic ideals which the 
Prussian regime has subordinated to the state's 
welfare. The character work in the play is ad- 
mirable, from the delightful rabbi to the girl at 
the inn which was, for so long, the meeting place 
of "the companions of the storm." 

Since the appearance of Der Sturmgeselle 
Sokrates Sudermann has experimented variously. 
Stein unter Steinen (1905) is a sociological play 
with a dash of unreal sentiment; Das Blumen- 
boot and Der gute Ruf, excursions into the fever- 
ish life of the West End of Berlin as Sudermann 
sees it. Aside from all these plays stands Strand- 
kinder (1909), a tale of the barbaric North dur- 
ing the Middle Ages when the Teutonic knights 
sought to subdue the fierce Vikings of the Baltic 
litoral. Here, as elsewhere, Sudermann mistakes 



134 THE MODERN DRAMA 

luridness for power, but there resounds through 
the play the crying of wild souls, the beat of icy 
surges, the desperate struggle of an heroic Ger- 
manic folk over whom is flung the snare of an 
alien civilisation. A faint, far echo of that for- 
gotten strength of his ancestors still lives, at 
times, in Sudermann himself. He has never be- 
come utterly subdued to the corruptions that al- 
lure him. Although his is no free creation spirit, 
he has succeeded, again and again, in projecting 
characters or suggesting an atmosphere which, in 
any country but his own, would have placed him 
in the front rank of modern dramatists. If 
he has sunk to the level of Lavedan and Pinero 
at their worst, if he has equalled the violence of 
Le Duel and the crass bidding for popularity of 
The "Mind the Faint" Girl (1912), he has 
also created figures and written scenes which 
neither his French nor his English contemporary 
have equalled in reality or imaginative power. 
Of so much praise only an untenable severity of 
judgment or the personal animosity of the Ber- 
lin press can ever rob him. 

IV 

The remarkable external successes of Suder- 
mann did nothing to impede the naturalistic 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY 135 

movement in the art of the drama. Hauptmann, its 
master spirit, illustrated its possibilities and broad- 
ened its application year by year. In 1890 ap- 
peared The Reconciliation, in 1891, Lonely Lives. 
In 1892 he created the naturalistic folk-tragedy 
in The Weavers, in 1893, the naturalistic comedy 
in The Beaver Coat. In each of these years the 
art of naturalistic dramaturgy gained new re- 
cruits. The year 1890 saw Ludwig Fulda's so- 
cial drama, Das verlorene Paradis, 1891, his vig- 
orous and telling Die Sklavin. In the same year 
Arthur Schnitzler began his career as a dramatist 
— surpassed by Hauptmann and by Hauptmann 
only — with Das Marchen. In 1892 appeared 
the best play of Johannes Schlaf, Meister Oelze, 
as well as the first mature plays of Max Dreyer, 
perhaps the weakest of the group (Dm), and of 
the superbly gifted Otto Erich Hartleben (Hanna 
Jagert). The year 1893 finally saw Max 
Halbe's Jugend, Georg Hirschfeld's Zu Hause 
and Ernst Rosmer's (Frau Else Bernstein) Dam- 
merung. Thus the tale of eminent names was 
rapidly completed and the forms of the natural- 
istic drama definitely fixed. Of these play- 
wrights one, Ludwig Fulda, abandoned natural- 
ism; Hartleben and Schnitzler informed the 
genre with the force of their high originality; the 



136 THE MODERN DRAMA 

delicate gifts of Frau Bernstein found a happier 
employment in other fields. Hence the immedi- 
ate school of consistent naturalism and of Haupt- 
mann is represented by Max Halbe, Max Dreyer, 
and Georg Hirschfeld. 

Max Halbe (b. 1865) is a native of West 
Prussia. His deepest feelings are his love for 
his homeland — the half Slavic shores of the Ms- 
tula — and his poignant regret and desiderium for 
the mad sweetness of youth. These emotions he 
has dramatised in plays that are almost if not 
quite great. His imitations of Ibsen, his dealings 
with a more or less bohemian Berlin life are neg- 
ligible. 

It is difficult to convey a sense of the quality 
of Jugend (1893), Halbe's best play and one of 
the memorable achievements of the modern 
drama. The fable amounts to very little. An 
excellent elderly West Prussian priest, Hoppe, 
supports his orphaned niece Annchen, aged eight- 
een, and her imbecile half-brother Amandus. 
Into this house comes for a brief visit — on his 
way from the gymnasium to a South German 
university — a young cousin of the girl's own age, 
Hans Hartwig. The boy and girl have not seen 
each other for years; Annchen has had priests 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY 137 

for her only companions; Hans has been under 
the strict discipline of the German school. The 
heady sweetness of spring sheds poetry and grace 
over their suddenly imperious instincts. Almost 
before the young people are aware, the irreparable 
has happened. A shot from Amandus, meant 
for Hans, strikes Annchen and brings the play to 
a fortuitous close. What glorifies the play, for 
I can use no lesser word, is the exquisite picture 
of young love, consciously touched with tragedy, 
but irresistible, the loveliness of a sane instinct 
unblunted, unvitiated by the wrongs, the sins, 
the violences of life. Thus love may have come 
and almost thus been tasted in some morning of 
the world. Yet the reality of the scene and of 
the passion is complete. For a few days these 
two young creatures forget society, or strive to 
forget it: Hans, his necessary career, Annchen, 
her social asset of chastity. That is all. Any 
other way of ending the play would have served 
equally well. The lyric cry that may be at the 
heart of the homeliest reality, the hymn of love 
that may be heard by the simplest souls, has been 
uttered. 

Those two young lovers reappear in Mutter 
Erde (1897). But Paul Wergenthin and An- 
toinette had the self-restraint of their finer na- 



138 THE MODERN DRAMA 

tures. So life divides them and Paul goes to 
Berlin, marries a rather unsexed feminist, and 
seems lost to his youth and his deeper self. But 
his father's death recalls him home to the bleak 
land and snowy forests of other days. Here, at 
the cradle of his race, near the great heart of his 
mother earth, the falseness and hollowness of his 
Berlin life becomes clear to him. His feminist 
wife, an uprooted social vagrant, has only a sneer 
for ancestral traditions, the fundamental human 
sanctities that are revived in Paul's heart. He 
meets his old sweetheart. They are both bound 
beyond the hope of freedom. Neither can go 
back to the life of the immediate past, and they 
ride forth over the wintry plains to love and to 
death. 

Das tausendjahrige Reich (1900) is a study 
in folk psychology. The smith Drewfs is con- 
vinced of the coming of the millennium and reads 
the signs of the times in the light of the Apoca- 
lypse. His cruel fanaticism drives his wife to her 
death. He calls upon God to bear witness to 
his innocence, and the lightning, that breaks over 
the village after a long drouth, strikes his smithy. 
Of a more haunting power and sterner beauty is 
Der Strom (1904). The Vistula is the real pro- 
tagonist. The frozen stream, threatening to 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY 139 

burst its dikes, looms in its passive majesty above 
the wrongs and loves of the Doom family. At 
the decisive moment of their fate the ice breaks, 
the country side is in terror, and Peter Doom, 
the dike-reeve, is able to expiate his sin in de- 
fence of the land and its folk. 

All these plays end, it will be observed, in a 
violent catastrophe. Therein lies Halbe's weak- 
ness. He can project, dramatically, with the ut- 
most power, an emotion or a mood. Having 
done so he has exhausted his peculiar gift; he 
cannot carry a fable to its simple and convincing 
conclusion. But he finds us through the mem- 
ories that our hearts treasure, memories of home 
and youth and of some landscape that means 
home and youth to us. 

Max Dreyer (b. 1862) a North German from 
Mecklenburg made his appearance in 1892 with 
a closely observed and closely woven psycholog- 
ical drama, Dm. The verisimilitude of charac- 
ter and dialogue is, as in all the work of this 
group of men, above reproach. But I am not 
convinced that Dreyer has contributed any highly 
personal element to the naturalistic drama. 
W inter schlaf (1895) which is, like Halbe's Der 
Strom, a landscape play, is an admirably com- 



140 THE MODERN DRAMA 

petent work of a given order, but no more. 
Dreyer won his great success in 1899 with Der 
Probekandidat. The drama that exhausts the 
physical and psychical characteristics of a nar- 
rowly delimited milieu or class or profession is 
among the special kinds that naturalism has cul- 
tivated. Dreyer turned his attention to the Ger- 
man gymnasium and the important subject of 
the freedom of teaching. He presents a young 
teacher of biology, Dr. Heitmann, who has many 
reasons for clinging to his position, among them 
an admirable mother whose last hopes are fixed 
on him. He is driven out of his profession for 
refusing to palter with the truth. Around Heit- 
mann are grouped a set of extraordinarily vivid 
characters — the director of the gymnasium, 
swayed by every breath of ministerial policy, the 
church dignitary who is determined that Dar- 
winism shall not corrupt the mind of Christian 
youth, the teacher who is breaking down under 
the pressure of intellectual tyranny, and the 
teacher who imitates and flatters the director for 
the sake of professional preferment. The dra- 
matic values of the situation are used with a 
touch of cleverness (especially in the central 
scene of the faculty meeting) which Hauptmann 
would disdain, but which never degenerates into 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY 141 

mere external effectiveness. The play enjoyed a 
very remarkable run on the stage, and gave rise 
to a number of dramatic interpretations of Ger- 
man school life no less successful than itself. 
The most amusing of these is Otto Ernst's 
Flachsmann als Erzieher (1901), the most deeply 
felt and clearly projected, the very moving Trau- 
mulus (1904) by Arno Holz and Otto Jerschke. 

Nearest to Hauptmann in the quality of his 
gifts and in his mastery of naturalistic technique 
stands Georg Hirschfeld (b. 1873). Condemned 
to an early maturity by his Berlin environment 
and by his race, Hirschfeld has not fulfilled the 
promise of his marvellous youth. At twenty he 
wrote Zu Hause (1893), at twenty-two, Die 
Mutter (1895), at twenty-five, Agnes Jordan 
(1898). Later he essayed the polemic play of 
literary life, Der junge Goldner (1901), the 
fairy play, Der Weg zum Licht (1902), and even 
comedy, Spatfriihling (1906). None of these 
later pieces are contemptible, but none are ex- 
traordinary. I trust that a second spring of crea- 
tive vision will come to him: for the present his 
career may be said to have ended with Agnes Jor- 
dan. 

The three plays of his youth, however, en- 



142 THE MODERN DRAMA 

title him to a place among the minor but genu- 
ine masters of the modern drama. He shares 
with the other naturalists the power of creating, 
without rift or seam, the illusion of reality. He 
adds thereto the special power of conveying the 
obscure and intricate life of the soul. His char- 
acters yield up to us, especially in Agnes Jordan, 
that incommunicable inner life which each of us 
shelters in his own breast. Nor do they yield it 
up by elaborate speeches or undramatic revela- 
tions, but by simple and natural words about sim- 
ple and natural things. In a syllable, in a glance, 
life wrests their secret from them and it is ours. 
The one act play, Zu Hause, showed a mature 
and finished art. The elder Doergens, a business 
man of warm feelings, sensitive and really high- 
minded, has been broken in will and degraded in 
spirit by the pressure of existence. His wife is 
mercilessly exacting in her love of pleasure, his 
younger son spoiled, cynical, ignorant of the very 
qualities of affection and respect. His youngest 
child is a hopeless invalid. This little daugh- 
ter's illness was the last blow to Doergens' soul. 
We see him come in from a long day of money- 
making in the cold of a Berlin winter, loaded 
with bundles, weary in body, sick at heart. But 
his wife's guests are already there, her creditors 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY 143 

are at the door. She asks for — money. No one 
has told him that his older son Ludwig is com- 
ing home that night; no one has had time. The 
son comes — a young physician — after a three- 
years absence and the terrible conditions of that 
home are gradually unfolded. It is all painful 
and very unheroic. When Doergens presses the 
hand of his first-born and tells him that, despite 
the burden of life, he does not agree with his 
wife that Ludwig need sink all his ambitions into 
earning money, he has no better eloquence at his 
command than you or I. Rut his tragedy is 
being enacted in the apartment next to ours or 
in the house next door. If it be the end of a 
tragic action to purge the emotions through pity 
and terror, that end is here achieved. 

Die Mutter, which was Hirschfeld's great suc- 
cess on the stage, has none of the hard, irresistible 
pathos of Zu Hause. He has lavished all his 
strong and beautiful art upon engaging our be- 
lief for his central incident. The characters are 
indisputably alive; the milieu of the Rerlin poor 
in the second act is consummately done. Yet we 
are not convinced that the working girl, although 
she was to become a mother, gave back her artist 
lover to his family without resistance, for his art's 
sake. Throughout the play there runs an elegiac 



144 THE MODERN DRAMA 

note that was new to naturalistic art and that 
foreshadowed the dominant tone of Agnes Jor- 
dan. 

Until Arnold Bennett and Edward Knoblauch 
wrote Milestones (1912), the structure of Agnes 
Jordan was unique in the history of the modern 
drama. The happenings of the first act take 
place in 1865, of the second in 1873, of the third 
and fourth in 1882, of the fifth in 1896. The 
purpose of the play is twofold: to embrace and 
interpret the whole fate of Agnes Jordan herself, 
and to delineate the changing characteristics of a 
certain social group in the city of Berlin. The 
instructed reader or spectator divines without dif- 
ficulty, despite Hirschfeld's immense reserve and 
scrupulous objectivity, a noble personal motive 
behind the second purpose of the play. He de- 
sired to show how the Jewish middle class of 
Berlin (never without its sprinkling of high- 
minded men and women) had become softened, 
broadened and refined during the thirty years 
spanned by his action. To this purpose the pe- 
culiar power of the drama is closely allied. The 
character-work of the naturalists is intense and 
incomparably convincing. But it is static. The 
actions of their plays are completed within a few 
hours, days, or, at most, weeks. Hence these ac- 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY 145 

tions are the results of character as it is, not as 
it is becoming. Nor is this a surprising fact. 
For it cannot be often within the reach of any 
artist to combine that pitch of verisimilitude 
which naturalism demands with a consistent de- 
velopment of character. Hirschfeld alone, in 
this single play, has met the utmost stringency 
of both demands. We see Agnes in the radiant 
charm of her hopeful youth, in the bitter revolt 
of her disillusioned womanhood, in the serene 
freedom of soul which her dedication to duty has 
given her at last; we see her children as boys and 
as men, and we doubt no more that this is the 
same woman, these the same lads, than we would 
doubt it of the familiar friends of all our years. 
The irrepressible, impossible Jordan alone, 
though he loses the power to hurt, does not 
change. And in that contrast Hirschfeld touches 
the highest point of his art. For it is the tragedy 
of the shallow and the self-opinionated that they 
cannot mellow or soften or rise beyond them- 
selves. Just as Jordan dragged his young wife 
from Beethoven to hear Meyerbeer, so, in his old 
age, he splutters to his son, a musician and a 
disciple of Brahms and Wagner: "Think of the 
money that fellow Mascagni is making!" I can- 
not touch upon the wealth of true and harmonious 



146 THE MODERN DRAMA 

detail by which these central characters are sur- 
rounded. The play, despite its large inclusive- 
ness, is never discursive, never loses its austere 
unity of action, tone and thought. It is a piece 
of life — life with its sadness, its sordidness, its 
evil compulsions, its disillusions, but also with 
those brave, indomitable dreams, given up by one 
frustrate generation only to be passed on to the 
next which, though doomed perhaps to defeat in 
its turn, will yet not surfer the sacred torch to 
be extinguished. 



German literature has sustained no deeper loss 
in this generation than it did when Otto Erich 
Hartleben died in 1905 at the early age of forty- 
one. A master of dramaturgy, the possessor of 
a style in dialogue no less exact, but more subtle, 
witty and eloquent than that of the consistent 
naturalists, he was also a brave and incisive 
thinker. In this quality, too, he stands in con- 
trast to the naturalist. The latter absorbs life 
and re-creates it. So soon as he thinks, as 
Goethe said of Byron, he becomes a child. Now 
Hartleben's plays are drenched with thought. I 
had almost called him a German Shaw. But I 
know very well that Hartleben must have thought 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY 147 

Shaw a prig; I am equally sure that Shaw, could 
he read Hartleben, would think him a cad. The 
antinomy is the old but tremendously real one 
between Hellenism and Hebraism. To Hart- 
leben the life of the senses is a fact and a splendid 
fact; to Shaw it is a burden that is to be stripped 
of glamour and romance and solemnly dedicated 
to eugenic uses. Hartleben sees in it a clean and 
radiant thing which we have contorted and de- 
filed through moral conventions that are rooted 
in the lust of power and the greed of gold. 

He explains his point of view with great verve 
and fine precision in his satiric play, Die Erzie- 
hung zur Ehe (1893). A young man of good 
family may not marry at the age when love is 
a clean and instinctive passion, because he can- 
not yet properly support a wife and children of 
his own class. Neither, however, will respect- 
able society permit him to have a mistress who 
is also comrade and friend. The attachment 
may become too strong and our young man may 
publicly outrage public morality. So society 
forces him to abandon such a mistress with brutal 
abruptness and then damns her for becoming a 
harlot. To the young man, however, it whis- 
pers that harlots are his proper resort until his 
income entitles him to the spotless respectability 



148 THE MODERN DRAMA 

of an appropriate marriage. And thus he comes 
to marriage at last, worn out in body and cor- 
rupted in his emotions but — respectable. Raised 
to a very much loftier plane, the theme of that 
most beautiful and moving tragedy Rosenmon- 
tag (1900) is still the same. 

The recognition of this tangle of unclean incon- 
sistencies drove Hartleben into a completely an- 
archic scepticism on the whole subject of social, 
and specifically, of sexual morality. "If God 
made the world," the abandoned girl argues in 
Die Erziehung zur Eke, "we may surely accept 
man with the instincts and the nature which God 
gave him." "But if God did not make the 
world," she goes on, "then I don't see at all how 
we dare to demand of man that he be other than 
he is." "But, Meta," the young student ex- 
claims, "that point of view would put an end to 
all moral judgments!" And with a harsh sin- 
cerity the girl replies: "Yes, and that's what 
ought to be done !" 

Hartleben's scepticism went a step farther. 
From a distrust of social morality he passes to 
a distrust of man as an organiser of society at all. 
Hence at the height of the naturalistic movement 
which is so firmly founded on socialism and so- 
cial compassion, he alone sounded a note of op- 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY 149 

position in his austerest play, Hanna Jagert 
(1893). What is the use of throwing over one 
set of compulsions for a newer, cruder, and per- 
haps, on trial, more galling set*? That is the 
conclusion to which Hanna Jagert is finally 
brought. She has satisfied her own unborrowed 
sense of honour and purity and feels a deep lib- 
eration from the disgrace of force and conflict. 
You may bully the individual soul in the name 
of bourgeois morality; you may bully it in the 
name of the collective welfare. The individual 
soul, the free personality, is still the one signifi- 
cant thing in the world and you — are still a bully. 
I would guard against conveying the impres- 
sion that Hartleben's art, like Brieux's or Shaw's, 
is argumentative. Not so. He shows his aspects 
of truth in embodiments as objective and as pun- 
gently concrete as any naturalist. But his work 
has intellectual copiousness; it has zest and wit; 
it has an aroma that is almost heady. Unlike 
the minor naturalists, Hartleben was not only a 
dramatist, but also a poet. His work is less 
grave than theirs, perhaps, in its totality, less 
solid — even less permanently built. But, for our 
time, it has extraordinary richness and charm. 

The drastic plays of Hartleben seem almost 



i;o THE MODERN DRAMA 

reactionary beside the cold analysis of Frank 
Wedekind (b. 1864). The moral ideas of or- 
ganised society had Hartleben in their grip. 
That is why he spent his life in the combat ex- 
pressed by his motto: In Philistros! Wedekind 
betrays no consciousness of the existence of any 
moral standards or restraints. He simply sets 
down the partial but penetrating vision of his 
anarchic soul. The atmosphere of scandal that, 
for a time, surrounded his name, is quite mislead- 
ing. His problems are, to be sure, exclusively 
erotic. But the corrupt mind that goes to him 
for sensual allurement will be curiously disap- 
pointed. This fact was clearly demonstrated in 
the proceedings brought against Wedekind and 
his publisher in 1904. The superior court recog- 
nised the apparent monstrousness of Die Bucks e 
der Pandora^ but had the good sense to decide 
that so unsparing a presentation of vice could 
harm no one. Of the possible moral effect of 
his plays Wedekind himself is, I imagine, quite 
careless. But his nature is dry and his artistic 
processes, arbitrary as they are, have an indefin- 
able coldness and impersonality. 

His first and best play, by which both his fame 
and his infamy were established, is Friihlings 
Erwachen (1894). And no competent account 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY 151 

of the modern drama can venture to omit this 
highly remarkable work. Whatever the precep- 
tist critic may urge against subjects fit only for 
the clinic or the text-book of pathology, the over- 
whelming fact must give even him pause that 
modern literature, in all tongues and countries, 
is driven by the impulse to make its content co- 
extensive with life itself. To deplore this im- 
pulse is legitimate; to set oneself against it is 
futile. The great historical waves of tendency 
will stop for no man's discomfort. The shores 
of literature are strewn with the wreckage of 
critics who, in one form or another, have uttered 
the cry of Jeffrey on Wordsworth: "This will 
never do!" 

In Fruhlings Erwachen Wedekind set himself 
the task of describing and interpreting the sexual 
difficulties of adolescence. Partly by the force 
of his own temperament, partly on account of the 
difficulties of his theme, he abandoned the mas- 
sive and continuous technique of naturalism. 
The play consists of a large number of scenes, 
unrelated as far as external structure goes, but 
each giving us a swift and sudden insight into 
the souls and bodies of his characters. These 
scenes do not, in any ordinary sense, develop a 
fable; they do succeed, in their totality, in pre- 



152 THE MODERN DRAMA 

senting a highly complex condition that manifests 
itself variously through the medium of various 
souls. Each scene, moreover, though of a haunt- 
ing reality of impression, is lifted above the 
physical crassness of its incidents by a strange 
remoteness of speech and gesture that clings to 
all the characters. Thus even the incredibly dar- 
ing incident in the Korrektionsanstalt fills one 
with compassion rather than with disgust. It is 
not hard to disengage in fairly exact terms the 
thoughts to which the shifting scenes of the play 
correspond: The youth of the race is seized at 
a certain period by inevitable instincts and pas- 
sions. Society is so organised, however, and con- 
ventions are so fixed, that youth attains no clar- 
ity concerning these instincts, but struggles with 
them in the lurid twilight of ignorance and of 
phantastic guilt. Thus bodies are corrupted and 
souls perverted by the mysterious degradation of 
the race's very condition of continuance. A mor- 
bid importance then surrounds the instinct of sex ; 
it penetrates all the recesses of the nature; it be- 
comes unclean; it gives rise to practices that 
deepen the evil and unnatural sense of guilt. 
These facts no sane observer of society will deny. 
In Wedekind's play they are rendered objective 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY 153 

in a manner that will deeply stir the mature mind 
to compassion and reflection. 

An arbitrary and phantastic element which ad- 
mirably softened the incidents of Wedekind's first 
play has, unhappily, asserted itself in his later 
work to the exclusion of saner qualities. His 
characters have become increasingly eccentric un- 
til all recognisable human motives and actions 
seem often obscured. His most solid and valu- 
able achievement, after Friihlings Erwachen is 
Erdgeist (1895) with its sequel Die Biichse der 
Pandora (1904). The protagonist of these 
pieces is a Nana who never, like Zola's heroine, 
exceeds the possibilities of her type, although she 
too symbolises the lure and ruthless cruelty of 
the flesh. It is possible that the peculiar virtues 
of some of his more recent plays elude my percep- 
tion. The man has in him the seeds of a new 
technique and of a new fashion of dealing with 
life. And these seeds may, before the merely pro- 
testing critic is aware, produce an art which, how- 
ever repugnant to our immediate tastes, will not 
permit itself to be neglected. 



154 THE MODERN DRAMA 

VI 

"For dream and waking with each other blend, 
Falsehood and truth, and certainty is not." 
Schnitzler's Paracelsus. 

"De quelque fagon que Ton congoive la vie, et la 
connut-on pour le reve d'un reve, on vit." 

Anatole France. 

Second to Hauptmann alone in the rank of 
modern German playwrights and one of the most 
notable creative artists of our age is the Viennese 
physician, Arthur Schnitzler (b. 1862). In his 
work the naturalist's fidelity to truth and his mas- 
sive simplicity of technique have undergone an 
exquisite transformation. Schnitzler is master of 
both. But he has sought to disengage the poetry 
and the pathos of our lives. He has brooded 
upon the contents of our experience and cannot 
find in his heart the stern or even militant ac- 
cents of the naturalists of the North. The soul 
of man is a great country {Das weite Land, 
1910) in which live side by side strange beauty 
and terror, yearning and desire. Our motives are 
never unmixed, our actions never single in pur- 
pose; good and evil are but coarse names for ab- 
stract extremes which reality never approaches. 
Hence "it is better to give happiness than to be 
guiltless" (Der eznsame Weg, 1903). Happi- 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY 155 

ness we must needs desire and our only chance 
of possessing even its shadow is by yielding to 
experience, not by refusing it. This does not 
mean romantic bustle — fighting or sea-faring. 
"It needs no special display of events or adven- 
tures in order to experience something" (Zwzsck- 
enspiel, 1904). But we must not deny our- 
selves to the illusions of fame, of love, of youth ! 
Of youth pre-eminently, for "so long as one is 
young, all doors are open, and beyond every door 
the world begins" {Der einsame Weg). Such 
is the poetry of life. Its pathos lies in the transi- 
toriness of all our illusions, the briefness and pre- 
cariousness of our truly "living hours," the lone- 
liness of the soul and the imminent shadow of 
death. In the shimmer of life's dissolving ap- 
pearances art is an enduring element. "Living 
hours? They live no longer than the last man 
who remembers them. It is not the meanest call- 
ing to lend such hours a permanence beyond them- 
selves" (Lebendige Stunden, 1901). 

The thirst for the illusion and the necessity 
of yielding to it — these are the two notes that 
Schnitzler is never weary of sounding. "By thr 
way," says a character in Der einsame Weg, "I 
know a man who is eighty-three years old; h: 
has buried two wives, seven children, not to men- 



156 THE MODERN DRAMA 

tion grandchildren, and he plays the piano in a 
shabby little music-hall in the park, while artists 
of both sexes display on the stage their tights and 
the flutter of their short skirts. Well, the other 
day, when the wretched show was over and they 
were putting out the lanterns, strangely enough 
he went on, imperturbably, playing on the vile 
box. And so we invited him, Ronsky and I, to 
sit down at our table and we began to chat with 
him. And he told us that the last piece he had 
played was his own composition. Naturally we 
complimented him. And then his eyes shone and 
he asked in his trembling voice : c Do you believe, 
gentlemen, that my work will be successful?' He 
is eighty-three years old, and his career is ending 
in a little music-hall in the park, and his audience 
is composed of nurse-girls and corporals and the 
yearning of his soul is — their applause." Thus 
ends a life that was permitted to spend itself for 
its proper illusions. What of a life that was 
denied them? To the old musician Weiring in 
Liebelei (1894) comes a neighbour to console 
him for the death of his sister, an elderly spinster. 

Katharina: ,But it must be a real consolation to know 
that you were always the benefactor and protector of a 
poor dear creature like that — 

Weiring: Yes, I used to imagine that too, long ago, 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY 157 

when she was a lovely young girl, and I seemed to my- 
self Heaven knows how clever and noble. But then later 
when the grey hairs began to come and the wrinkles, and 
one day passed after another — and with them all her 
youth — and the girl gradually became — one hardly no- 
tices such things, you know — an old' spinster, it was only 
then that I began to feel what I had really done. 

Katharina: But Mr. Weiring . . . 

Weiring: I see her before me this minute, the way 
she used to sit opposite me so often, in the evening, in the 
room there by the lamplight, and look at me with that 
quiet smile of hers, with that utterly resigned smile — as 
though she wanted to thank me ; and I — I felt as though 
I had to throw myself at her feet and beg her to forgive 
me for having guarded her so well from all danger and 
from, all delight. 

But there- is a sharper tragedy than that — to 
grasp one's illusions, like the golden leaves in 
the fairy tale, and find them autumn foliage, sere 
and wind-blown. That is the deepest experience 
of all the characters of Schnitzler from Anatol 
(1890) to Das weite Land (1910). Love and 
delight and even sorrow slip from us on our soli- 
tary path; we yearn for the reality of enduring 
spiritual values and are lost amid the imperma- 
nence of dreams. And therefore Sehnitzler's 
men and women, even in the pursuit of their dear- 
est illusions, are touched with sadness. Pensively 
they walk in those Viennese gardens which their 



158 THE MODERN DRAMA 

creator loves to delineate — discoursing of love and 
life and death. The light there is never radiant, 
the darkness is never sombre; a mild wind stirs 
the tops of the slender poplars that stand against 
the fading orange of the evening sky. 

This interpretation of the spirit of Schnitzler's 
work may seem to be incomplete since it does not 
stress the note of social protest heard in a few 
of his earlier plays: Das Marchen (1891), Frei- 
wild (1896) and Das Vermdchtnis (1897). In 
sounding that note, however, Schnitzler was im- 
pelled primarily by the spirit of a particular 
decade. And even as it is, the note is softened, 
almost muffled, and the conclusion of the whole 
matter is hardly a summons to revolt or even re- 
form, but rather in harmony with that wise sen- 
tence which Matthew Arnold loved to quote: 
"Things are as they are; why then should we 
strive to be deceived?" In Das Marchen, for in- 
stance, the problem is that of the girl — in this 
case a gifted young actress — who has made a mis- 
take of youth and passion. Shall no sweetness 
of spirit, no power of love, make her the equal of 
any shallow but unspotted creature? And what 
about the purity of men? The intellect of Fedor 
Weill and his sense of justice rebel against so 
cruel and unequal a convention. But the test 



THE DRAMA: IN GERMANY 159 

comes, and all that he can see in Fanny's eyes are 
alien memories, all that he can feel upon her lips 
are the kisses with which she was unfaithful to 
him before she knew him. "Things are as they 
are!" He lets her go from him. "What has 
been — is; therein lies the deep meaning of all past 
events." 

In Freiwild, the finest dramatic treatment of 
the theme of honour — incomparably superior to 
Sudermann's and Hartieben's plays — and in Das 
Vermachtnis, Schnitzler's mood is more practical, 
his tone sharper, his attack more definite. But in 
these two plays he treats conventions and preju- 
dices of a merely social order. Now it is the 
special praise of his art that it deals, in all its 
finest examples, not with the laws of society but 
with the soul of man. His are not Hauptmann's 
great notes of hunger, love and prayer. Our 
dreams, our disillusions are his theme; above all, 
our yearning for harmony and permanence, 
quenchless and doomed to an eternity of defeat. 

All his favourite motives appear in his earliest 
dramatic work, the group of one-act plays called 
Anatol (1889-1890). In the first play Anatol's 
mistress rests in hypnotic sleep; he may now ask 
her whether she loves him and is true to him. 
He does not ask, for it is by our illusions that 



160 THE MODERN DRAMA 

we live. The second play is a miniature tragedy 
because Gabriele has never had the courage to 
3'ield to the supreme illusion of love. And in 
the third play an exquisite illusion — true as the 
truth itself but for a stupid coincidence — is 
broken. Nor is Schnitzler's deeper thought ab- 
sent from the apparent frivolity of these ex- 
quisite sketches. For even the elegant trifler 
Anatol is, in his way, a seeker for permanence 
amid the shadows that glide by us. The work- 
manship was, even in this early effort, in har- 
mony with the spirit of Schnitzler's theme. 
What lightness and firmness of structure ! What 
exquisite limpidness in the medium of dialogue! 
What melancholy and caressing grace! It 
seemed as though the spirit of old Vienna and 
of Mozart had blended with that of this modern 
man of science, this fundamentally naturalistic 
playwright, who never shirks the verisimilitude 
of honest art, but who can draw from reality a 
music so subtle, sweet and mournful. 

That music grows deeper and graver in 
Liebelei. The play is usually held to be Schnitz- 
ler's masterpiece. Its theme is the playing with 
love that may hide a tragic passion, the gentle 
comedy of a springtime that may end in terror. 
The lilacs are fragrant in the play, and from the 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY 161 

high window of Christine's room we feel the 
winds of spring carrying love and death. But 
higher than Liebelei, and higher than the one-act 
plays — a form of which Schnitzler is the undis- 
puted master — Die Gefahrtin (1898) or Leben- 
dige Stunden (1901) — I am inclined to rate two 
of his later dramas: Der einsame Weg (1903) 
and Der Ruf des Lebens (1905). To recount 
the fables of these plays would be quite futile. 
For the virtue of Schnitzler's art does not reside 
in the powerful or clever or consistent handling 
of an action, although he can handle an action in 
all those ways; it resides in the creation of a 
spiritual atmosphere which, by its freedom and 
largeness, interprets not only the lives of his char- 
acters but sends out a glow in the light of which 
we, too, can interpret our experience -of soul and 
sense. This is especially true of Der einsame 
Weg. The people in this play love the illusions 
by which we live. But all delusions they have 
put away. Theirs are no ready-made ethical 
precepts or prejudices by which reality is schema- 
tised into a system, and our actions reduced to 
symbols of mere arbitrary values. These men 
and women are in touch with the concrete facts 
of life — the eternally separate and individual im- 
pulses and actions which no man can adjudge and 



162 THE MODERN DRAMA 

no generalisation reach. To read this beautiful 
and subtle work aright is a liberal education in 
the virtue of charity and the art of living. For 
the deepest and central fact of all our experience 
is that imperious call of life which all these peo- 
ple, in their various ways, have answered. One 
may hang back for a space; one may, like the 
Blue Cuirassiers in Der Ruf des Lebens, inter- 
pret the call of life as a call of death. But one 
must yield at last, and in the places whither it 
summons — there build one's heavens and hells. 
To refuse the call is more than human — or less. 
Marie, in Der Ruf des Lebens, dwells in a sullen, 
sultry unreality until she heeds the call. The 
storm of life, tragic and terrible, whirls her along. 
It leaves her broken. But having once lived, the 
wise physician promises her a resurrection of her 
life some day. 

The art of Schnitzler is an extraordinarily ripe 
and complex product. To communicate a sense 
of its quality is a matter of the last difficulty. 
Schnitzler has reflected profoundly, but has de- 
spaired of building himself a philosophic or re- 
ligious vision of the sum of things. Hence he 
stands beside the stream of reality in an attitude 
of sad contemplation, striving to disengage from 
that various and endless flow of appearances 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY 163 

such moods and forms as hold at least a shadowy 
prophecy of the direction in which the stream is 
tending. He knows that that direction, what- 
ever it be, is changeless, and that the current will 
sweep away our protests like windlestraws. To 
yield ourselves to it is our only wisdom and our 
only hope, yet not to yield blindly or to abandon 
that yearning for permanence which, be it a last 
illusion or not, is our most human and our most 
tragic gift. 

VII 

Productivity in the field of the German as of 
the French drama during the past twenty-five 
years has been astonishing. Hence, in dealing 
with it, as in dealing with the drama in France, 
I have had to impose fairly rigid limits upon the 
extent of my survey. In order to observe these 
limits it has been necessary to omit names and 
works which the narrow specialist may expect to 
find. Thus I have not discussed Hermann Bahr 
(b. 1863), the versatile friend and enemy, in 
creative work and criticism, of many movements, 
but a master in the mood of none. For very dif- 
ferent reasons I have omitted the striking and 
popular art of Adam Beyerlein (b. 1871), and 
for different reasons again, the powerful and 



164 THE MODERN DRAMA 

manly work of the Tyrolese, Karl Schoenherr. 
But my survey includes, I believe, every con- 
tributor to the naturalistic drama whose work has 
reached with any degree of certainty, a promise 
of lasting value and significance. 

That naturalistic drama of Germany to which I 
attribute qualities of so high an order, has attained 
those qualities by turning its vision not upon man 
as he ought to be, but as he is. It has not shaped 
its characters or fables according to anterior laws, 
conventions or decrees; nor has it forced its ma- 
terial into those moral categories by which we 
seek to rationalise the life of man, even as by an- 
other series of categories we seek to rationalise 
the life of nature. Nor yet has the naturalistic 
drama of Germany, like the naturalistic novel of 
France, merely narrated that concrete, that free, 
that boundless reality, but has brought it im- 
mediately home to our eyes, our ears, our hearts. 
The merely popular and the almost equally shal- 
low pseudo-idealistic protest that such art is de- 
pressing need not disturb one's estimate of this 
drama at all. Such is the life of man. If we 
cannot wring a bracing philosophy or a far-reach- 
ing hope from it, we shall, at least, not be de- 
ceived. But nothing, as a matter of fact, is so 
impressive or so heartening as the number of 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY 165 

souls, created without didactic consciousness or 
premeditation by the German naturalists, who 
under the tyranny of hunger, of passion, of de- 
spair, still toil and battle for some ideal value: 
for beauty, for justice, for liberty, for inner free- 
dom, for truth — the souls whom Hauptmann has 
described so well in Henry of Aue: 

"For they who strive are they who live albeit 
Erring. Tireless to strive is still to be 
Upon a goodly road." 



CHAPTER FOUR 
THE RENAISSANCE OF THE ENGLISH DRAMA 



The decline of the English drama in the nine- 
teenth century has long been a commonplace of 
criticism. Scarcely less obvious, at least to-day, 
are the two causes of that decline: the loss of a 
national sense for the theatre as a fine art, and 
the crushing weight of the Shakespearean tradi- 
tion. The English antipathy to the theatre, 
however, strikes its roots deeply into the nation's 
historical past; it goes back to Stephen Gosson's 
School of Abuse (1579) and to Jeremy Collier's 
Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness 
of the English Stage (1699) which, a century 
later, drew from the ageing Dryden so touching 
an admission and so modest a defence. The last 
school of native English drama, moreover, even to 
its latest exemplars in Sheridan, served but to 
deepen and harden that antipathy. The artifi- 
cial comedy that flourished after the Restoration, 

whether derived from the French stage, or but a 

166 



THE DRAMA IN ENGLAND 167 

new and brilliant continuation of the English 
comedy of humours, was written by the members 
of a small and artificial society for its own amuse- 
ment. It could not but complete the alienation 
of the great body of the English people from the 
art of the drama. That people was meanwhile, 
all during the eighteenth century, hardening in 
the moulds, of mutually repellent classes and mu- 
tually exclusive forms of dissent, until the pos- 
sibility of an homogeneous audience — the first 
condition of a national theatre — was definitely 
lost. The dramatist could make his appeal 
neither to a social consciousness as in France, nor 
to an ethnic consciousness as in Germany. The 
situation was memorably summed up by Matthew 
Arnold in 1879: "In England we have no mod- 
ern drama at all. Our vast society is not homo- 
geneous enough, not sufficiently united, even any 
large portion of it, in a common view of life, a~ 
common ideal capable as serving as basis for a 
modern English drama." 

Theatres continued to exist and plays to be 
produced. But the national alienation from the 
drama as an art affected the few who went to the 
theatre as profoundly as the many who stayed 
away. For the drama was felt to be part of the 
ungodly life at the worst, of the merely frivolous 



i68 THE MODERN DRAMA 

life at best. The intellectual classes had, as 
Shaw puts it, become thoroughly accustomed to 
do without the theatre; to the middle classes it 
represented an occasional excursion into a slightly 
improper or even degrading sphere. What de- 
mands would such an audience make? What 
standards would it be conscious of? The drama 
that still threatens at times the very existence of 
the English-speaking stage is the result — the 
drama that flatters the unintelligent prejudices 
of the crowd but allures its senses. In a word, 
Pinero's The "Mind the Paint" Girl (1912), 
uniting a vast display of finery, white shoulders 
and silk stockings with emphasis upon a moral 
attitude of inconceivable unveracity and sloth. 
During a great part of the nineteenth century, 
however, the supply of even such plays was want- 
ing in England. The eminent masters of the 
period expressed themselves through the novel 
which, with a notable tradition behind it, had at- 
tained the freedom and dignity of a great art. 
Meanwhile the well-made Parisian play was 
translated and adapted by many nameless pur- 
veyors to the stage as well as by Robertson, Gil- 
bert, Taylor and Charles Reade. So much a mat- 
ter of course had this process become that the 
revivers of the English drama found it necessary, 



THE DRAMA IN ENGLAND 169 

on play-bills and elsewhere, to point out the fact 
that their plays were "original," not adapted. 
Thus while France produced the solid social ob- 
servation, the flexibility of moral outlook that 
underlie the artifice of Augier and Dumas fits; 
while in Germany successive masterpieces (Heb- 
bel's Maria- Magdalena, 1843, Ludwig's Der 
Erbforster, 1850) upheld the realistic tradition of 
Lessing's maturity and of Schiller's youth, Eng- 
land — easily first in poetry and prose fiction — had 
nothing to show but the terrible melodramas of 
the elder Lytton. (Lady of Lyons, 1834; 
Money, 1840). 

How utterly devoid of standards that demand 
either reality or moral insight on the stage the 
English audience had become, is illustrated by the 
success accorded several of the comedies, notably 
Caste (1867) of Thomas William Robertson 
(1829-1871). The social and moral outlook of 
Caste summed up in the sentence : "What brains 
can break through, love may leap over," is one 
which every sensible observer of human nature 
knows to be violently untrue. That untruth has 
been exposed with the quietest power, the serenest 
certainty, by Mr. Galsworthy in The Eldest Son 
(1909). But in 1867 Robertson's play was her- 
alded as an attempt to bring the drama back to 



iyo THE MODERN DRAMA 

the life of its own day. "The whole secret of its 
success is truth," wrote a contemporary critic. 
And so confused are, to this day, the critical 
standards of the English drama that Robertson's 
impossible sentimentalities are still assigned at 
times an absolute rather than a merely historical 
importance. 

In this condition of the theatre — a theatre with- 
out truth, without art, wholly divorced from the 
consciousness of the nation — it was but natural 
that the greater spirits of the Georgian and Vic- 
torian periods were thrown entirely upon the tradi- 
tion of Shakespeare. Here was a drama that had 
its standards and its technique. It was a forlorn 
hope and an archaic artifice when considered with 
reference to any real theatre. But it produced 
a series of splendid if unplayable masterpieces 
from Shelley's Cenci (1819) to Swinburne's Mary 
Stuart (1881). At the same time it did incal- 
culable harm. It became an idol of the tribe." 
Anything that had the Elizabethan semblance 
was revered, and so brilliant and incorruptible 
a critic as Hazlitt, pronounced Sheridan Knowles 
"the first tragic poet of the age." Nor was this 
all. The contemporary stage was despised, not 
because it was bad, but because it was contem- 
porary; the delusion was fostered that men of the 



THE DRAMA IN ENGLAND 171 

nineteenth century could express themselves 
through the art of the seventeenth. Thus orig- 
inated and thus grew that worship of Shakespeare, 
not as a poet and seer, but as a dramatic techni- 
cian, which still, upon the lips of the learned and 
the guileless menaces the reborn drama of the Eng- 
lish race. 

The condition of the English theatre imme- 
diately before the rise of the contemporary move- 
ment is admirably illustrated by the efforts which 
Tennyson made to add the stage to his other con- 
quests. His historical plays are written wholly 
in the Shakespearean tradition. Of these Becket 
(1884) is probably the best. Constant elaborate 
changes of scene within the act unfit the play for 
the modern stage; verse alternates with prose for 
no reason but that it is so in Shakespeare: the 
verse is Tennyson disguising his voice; the prose, 
especially in the speeches of Walter Map, is 
pseudo-Shakespearean in rhythm and in richness 
of fancy, as clever and as useless as a copy of 
Latin verses by a gifted under-graduate. But 
the poverty of the age's drama appeared even 
more strikingly when Tennyson attempted, in 
The Promise of May (1882) a play of contem- 
porary rustic life. What fable did this great poet 
select, this poet who had so wisely and nobly ex- 



172 THE MODERN DRAMA 

pressed the philosophical movements of his age, 
and who for seventy years had lived observantly 
at the centre of national life? A young country 
girl makes a mistake. She feels that she must 
leave her home. Her aged father is at once 
stricken blind. The base seducer is a free-thinker, 
an impossible creature of straw and bran. At the 
end of five years of a spotless life the girl comes 
home — to die! Why? The poor girl's brief 
happiness did not even have the consequence that, 
in a base and intolerant environment, would have 
made life hard. In brief, the greatest English 
artist of his day lost all sense of reality, of jus- 
tice, of anything except conventional verbiage and 
parochial clap-trap at the mere touch of the con- 
temporary stage. One cannot but be grateful 
that less than ten years were to elapse before the 
coming of a dramatist who, whatever one's final 
estimate of him, cleared this murky and musty, 
this cruel, stupid, and unreal atmosphere by the 
simple and splendid fact that he "had no taste 
for what is called popular art, no respect for pop- 
ular morality, no belief in popular religion, no 
admiration for popular heroics." 

Gradually, however, the English drama was 
forced into activity if the theatre was to survive 
at all. During the eighteen hundred and eighties 



THE DRAMA IN ENGLAND 173 

the store of "well-made" French plays was ex- 
hausted, and no new ones were forthcoming. In 
1882 appeared Becque's Les Cor beaux; in 1885 
his Parisienne; in 1887 Antoine opened the Thea- 
tre Libre; the French drama became a great art 
in touch with the intimate realities of its age and 
place, and could no longer be transported across 
the Channel. And it was then that appeared the 
two well-known dramatists of the transition pe- 
riod of the modern English stage : Henry Arthur 
Jones and Arthur Wing Pinero. 

Almost simultaneously the artistic and intel- 
lectual isolation of the English drama was broken. 
Ibsen's A Doll's House was produced by Miss 
Janet Achurch in 1889, and 1891 saw the opening 
of the Independent Theatre with Ghosts. It was 
upon the boards of this theatre that Bernard Shaw 
opened his career as a dramatist in 1892 with 
Widowers 3 Houses. There followed more than 
a decade of turmoil and polemics. A group of 
excellent critics, headed by Mr. William Archer, 
fought brilliantly and learnedly that battle for 
the modern drama in English which is not yet 
wholly won. On the side of creative work, how- 
ever, many hopes have been realised. For the 
first five years of the twentieth century saw the 
beginnings of the incisive and subtle dramatic 



174 THE MODERN DRAMA 

work of Mr. Granville Barker and, in the person 
of Mr. John Galsworthy, at last gave England a 
modern dramatist of the rank, if not of the stature, 
of Ibsen and Hauptmann. 

II 

I have called Jones and Pinero the dramatists 
of a transitional period and a transitional method. 
The necessity for this distinction has never been 
sufficiently recognised, for the unintelligent ab- 
sence of any exact critical perceptions still clings 
to the discussions and the study of the English 
drama. We are not guilty of so grave a confu- 
sion of values in any other art. We are very 
sensitively aware of the difference between the 
art of Wilkie Collins and the art of Mr. Thomas 
Hardy. ^lt is quite possible for intelligent peo- 
ple to read The Woman in White with a certain 
avidity; it is not possible for them to confuse the 
quality or permanence of that pleasure with the 
quality and the permanence of pleasure given them 
by the Wessex novels.-^ftor, to take an example 
nearer home, will they let themselves be put off 
with The Firing Line in place of The Custom of 
the Country; with Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage- 
Patch in place of Sister Carrie. In the drama 
that discrimination is still to seek. And yet the 



THE DRAMA IN ENGLAND 175 

only hope for the drama in English lies in the 
gradual cultivation, in British and American au- 
diences, of that instinctive perception by which 
the play-goers of Berlin and Paris differentiate 
at once between Lindau and Hauptmann or be- 
tween Sardou and Hervieu. Until we come to 
understand with the utmost delicacy and 
thoroughness the chasm that divides the work of 
Henry Arthur Jones from the work of John Gals- 
worthy we shall continue to witness the disheart- 
ening spectacle of epoch-making runs for the 
decorative sentimentalities of David Belasco, 
while a play like Miss Sowerby's Rutherford 
and Son (1913) scarcely maintains itself for 
three weeks in the smallest of metropolitan the- 
atres. 

I hasten, even at the risk of quite abandoning 
the tone of history for that of polemics, to answer 
an objection that is constantly made to the es- 
tablishment of rigid standards in the art of the 
theatre. The drama, it is said, is a popular art; 
the great playwrights of the past — Sophocles, 
Shakespeare, Moliere — were the popular play- 
wrights of their own day. This is historically 
true. And it continues true. It cannot, indeed, 
be said that Hauptmann, Hervieu, and Schnitzler 
are absolutely the most popular dramatists of con- 



176 THE MODERN DRAMA 

temporary Germany, France and Austria. The 
vast complexity of modern life forbids any such 
absolute popular pre-eminence. But it is a fact 
that these dramatists, like the Molieres and 
Shakespeares of the past, have reached the au- 
diences of their time and country widely and per- 
manently, and can show the modern evidence of 
that success in wealth and power and prestige. 
To reverse this test, however, and apply it to 
English and American conditions, is to reduce it 
to the absurd. It is useless to waste time over a 
critical test that would assign any place in the 
history of the drama to Charles Klein or rob John 
Galsworthy of any share of his eminence by 
reason of his limited success upon the stage. The 
explanation of the apparent paradox of this state 
of affairs is to be found in that historical aliena- 
tion of the English audience from the theatre, of 
which I have spoken, and of the consequent loss 
of all standards touching the drama as a fine art. 
The audiences of Paris, of Vienna, of Weimar, 
have a secular tradition and training in regard to 
the theatre; the heterogeneous audiences of Lon- 
don and New York have none. Hence I am 
sorry to see several of our American universities 
striving to turn out dramatists who shall be able 
to grapple with the degrading conditions which 



THE DRAMA EN ENGLAND 177 

popular success demands to-day. Does not the 
truer function of our academic dealing with the 
drama lie in the formation of an audience which, 
by its homogeneous spiritual culture, by its fine 
sense of values, will help to banish the scenic dis- 
play and the melodrama to their proper place, 
and give the Galsworthys of the present and the 
future that hearing which Scandinavia and Ger- 
many, Austria and France, have given to the great 
playwrights of their modern theatre? 

The difference — for there is a difference — be- 
tween Mr. Henry Arthur Jones (b. 1851) and 
such a man as Paul Lindau consists in this : that 
Mr. Jones has a definite historical position in the 
development of the modern English drama. 
What his position is he has himself unconsciously 
defined in that very curious and instructive book 
The Renascence of the English Drama (1895). 
'"'The dramatic critics," Mr. Jones wrote, "who 
have advocated realistic principles have often by 
their admiration of mean, perverse things, been 
antagonistic to the permanent advance of the Eng- 
lish drama. . . . But the epitaph — it is already 
written — on all this realistic business will be — Tt 
does not matter what happens in kitchen mid- 
dens.' ' To such realism Mr. Jones opposes a 
drama that is to have f "beauty, mystery, passion, 



178 THE MODERN DRAMA 

imagination." A very few years before, how- 
ever, Mr. Jones had written as follows: "The 
fever and hurry of modern London life . . . have 
tended to spread abroad the strangely false idea 
that the one end of the theatre is — not to show 
us our lives — but to take us out of them! . . . 
Its complete acceptance by authors and public is 
the grave of the drama." These two utterances 
clearly betray a man who is under the traditional 
spell of that pseudo-idealism which has never, as 
a matter of fact, beheld the blinding face of either 
beauty or mystery but who, on the other hand, 
has had occasional perceptions of the fact that the 
development of the modern drama has been and 
must, on one whole side of its activity, continue to 
be in the direction of naturalism. The case of 
Mr. Jones is slightly complicated by the fact that 
he imagines himself a mighty radical. No doubt 
he has delivered some rough and ready blows at 
very primitive forms of human stupidity, as in 
The Triumph of the Philistines (1895). " As an 
artist, however, he is pathetically under the spell 
of every romantic folly, of any sentimental de- 
lusion. 

It is possible to test Mr. Jones' qualities as a 
playwright and observer by a brief analysis of two 
of his best-known plays: The Case of Rebel- 



THE DRAMA IN ENGLAND 179 

lious Susan (1895) an< ^ Michael and His Lost 
Angel (1896). 

Lady Susan Harabin, having discovered her 
husband's infidelity, refuses to be soothed or pla- 
cated. She feels that the ordinary facile forgive- 
ness of such wrongs will not meet her case. De- 
spite the protestations of her aunt, and of an uncle, 
Sir Richard Kato, who plays providence through- 
out the action, she leaves her home. Ten months 
have elapsed at the opening of the second act. 
During that period Lady Susan has had an affair 
of die heart with Lucien Edensor, though she did 
not, in all likelihood, go to the length of her orig- 
inal threat of vengeance in kind. She plans to 
elope with Lucien but is persuaded by Sir Richard 
to desist and to come to him. Before the begin- 
ning of the third act fifteen more months have 
gone by. Lady Sue now learns that Lucien's life- 
long sorrow for her loss lasted just three weeks, 
and she returns to Harabin whose regret over her 
desertion seems to have been largely caused by the 
trouble and expense that loose women inflicted on 
him during his temporary widowerhood. Now, 
wherein lies the "case" of Susan, and what does 
her "rebellion" come to"? Does she believe that 
infidelity dissolves the marriage bond? Or that 
it gives the woman an equal right? Or that it 



180 THE MODERN DRAMA 

is tragic? Or that, in the end, it doesn't mat- 
ter? Does she return to her husband from a 
sense of duty, or because she loves him, or merely 
because she has had a sentimental disappoint- 
ment? The feebleness of the central idea is only 
surpassed by the incurable externality of the 
characters and the groaning mechanism of the 
structure. The long intervals of time between 
the acts rob these episodes of any concentrated 
effect; the decisive action is always brought about 
by the sermonising and wire-pulling of Sir Richard 
Kato; if the play threatens, at any moment, to 
attain a shadow of unity or vigour — in prance 
two comic paper caricatures named Pybus and 
Elaine to convulse the latter-day groundlings with 
their sorry tricks. If they cannot be dragged in, 
we are treated to an Admiral of the British Navy 
who has excellent possibilities as a character type 
but who must needs be degraded into a drunken 
buffoon. The difference between such a play and 
one by Galsworthy is the difference between a 
mechanical toy and a living organism. 

Such is the realism of Jones. I come now 
to his "beauty, mystery, passion, imagination." 

Michael Feversham, an austere Anglican priest, 
forces the daughter of his secretary, who has 
sinned, into public confession and penitence. At 



THE DRAMA IN ENGLAND 181 

this time appears in his parish Mrs. Audrie Les- 
den, half angel, half demon, who tempts Michael 
by tempting him to save her. Four months pass. 
Michael is in his desolate hermitage on St. Decu- 
men's Island to watch and pray. Audrie man- 
ages to be left on the island. A message goes 
wrong; no boat can come that night; Michael and 
Audrie fall into sin. But her husband, of whose 
existence Michael was ignorant, appears. They 
part. A year passes. Michael has restored the 
ancient minister in his parish. But he cannot 
strangle "the snake of his sin" and on the day of 
the consecration of the minister confesses that sin 
to his people and leaves them. Ten months pass. 
Michael is in a convent in Italy, about to be re- 
ceived into the Roman communion. He cannot 
find peace without Audrie. He is told of her ill- 
ness. "She's dying!" he exclaims, and Audrie 
walks in with the remark: "I'm afraid I am." 
And proceeds to do so. 

That is, quite objectively put, the fable of the 
play. The dialogue is written in this fashion: 
"I was wondering what memories are stored in 
that white forehead." "Oh, it's cruel to dash 
the cup from my lips!" In Michael's mono- 
logues Mr. Jones reaches heights of this quality 
that would put Miss Braddon on her mettle. But 



182 THE MODERN DRAMA 

truly appalling is the sentimental glue into which 
are steeped, in the first and last acts, the silent 
and solemn mysteries of motherhood and death. 
It is hard to understand how any audience not 
wholly devoid of spiritual tone could ever have 
endured this unmanly desecration of our last sanc- 
tities. It is common enough, to be sure. I have 
a vision of Audrie Lesden, exquisitely gowned, 
dying -to the sweet, sweet strains of soft music on 
the boards of the old Fourteenth Street Theatre 
in New York, and of gum-chewing shop-girls dis- 
solved in the comfort of their tears. But Michael 
and His Lost Angel is taken seriously as the work 
of a serious playwright. Great wits praised it 
when it appeared — Mr. Archer and Mr. Shaw; 
American university professors interpret it in their 
lecture halls. 

I can find nothing in Mr. Jones' later plays to 
mitigate the harshness of this judgment. His 
ideas are feeble, his structure is mechanical, his 
dialogue is insincere. His characters never, in 
any deep and intimate sense, speak to each other, 
but always at the audience. His popularity is 
inevitable; his serious fame is a menace to the 
English drama. 

Sir Arthur Wing Pinero (b. 1855), tne second 



THE DRAMA IN ENGLAND 183 

figure in the transitional phase of the modern 
drama in England, has shown a far higher degree 
of flexibility as an artist than Mr. Jones. I ven- 
ture to call in question a corresponding inner de- 
velopment. For though he has written many ap- 
parently serious plays since his Court Theatre 
farces and The Profligate (1889), his career, for 
the moment, culminates in The "Mind the Paint" 
Girl (1912). 

His very early plays are harmless and negli- 
gible: The Magistrate (1885) is amusing 
enough; Sweet Lavender (1888) is a sentimental 
hodge-podge in which the poor working-girl turns 
out to be the rich man's daughter. One would 
not dream of discussing work of this quality in 
any art except the art of the English drama. No 
history of English literature is likely to discuss 
the novels of "The Duchess." But Mr. John 
Hare's production of The Profligate ( 1889) at the 
New Garrick Theatre with Mr. Forbes Robertson 
in the title role has been said to mark an epoch in 
the history of the modern drama. The Profligate, 
however, is really a more lamentable because a 
more pretentious play than the early farces and 
melodramas. It is the old-fashioned story of be- 
trayal with all its false and foolish moral arro- 
gance, with the phantastic insistence on sex in- 



184 THE MODERN DRAMA 

stinct as the exclusive property of one sex and as 
being, in that sex, a monstrous perversity which 
slays its shuddering and unwilling victims. The 
technique of the play represents the long arm of 
coincidence as the arm of a skilled prestidigitator. 
It must be an extraordinarily primitive audience 
that is taken in by the various reappearances of 
Janet Preece and the discovery of the real culprit 
in the third act. 

At the end of four years, however, years 
marked by the introduction of Ibsen into England, 
by the founding of the Independent Theatre and 
by the appearance of Mr. Shaw, Pinero produced 
The Second Mrs. Tanqueray. The absolute 
value of that play is, clearly, not of the highest. 
The catastrophe which inheres so closely in the 
characters is brought about by an unlikely and 
violent coincidence. And that coincidence is ef- 
fected because Pinero had not the fine artistic 
courage to leave Aubrey and Paula Tanqueray 
merely with a recognition of their real tragedy — 
the irrevocableness of the past. But intellec- 
tually The Second Mrs. Tanqueray is in a dif- 
ferent world from that of The Profligate. The 
outlook upon life is true and fearless within the 
given limits of merely social morality; a free and 



THE DRAMA IN ENGLAND 185 

human justice is dealt out in the characterisation 
of Paula Tanqueray herself. 

The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith (1894) though 
less effective as a whole marks a still further ad- 
vance in artistic and intellectual sincerity. The 
situation of that deadly compromise which Lucas 
Cleeve hesitates to reject, and which would have 
reduced Agnes Ebbsmith from a free personality 
in a free union to a common wanton — that situa- 
tion is finely conceived and embodied without 
cheap concessions to the mechanism of intrigue. 
Equally sound is the plea of Sybil Cleeve in the 
last act and her immediate repudiation of its dis- 
grace. Indeed Pinero's progress in the projec- 
tion of character was very notable during these 
years and approved itself especially in the rela- 
tions between John and Olive Allingham in his 
next play: The Benefit of the Doubt ( 1895). ^ 
is unfortunate that the whole action of this in- 
teresting work hinges upon a conversation over- 
heard through an elaborate bit of technical 
trickery. 

The level of these three plays Pinero was un- 
able to sustain. By perceptible gradations from 
play to play he sank once more to the shoddy and 
external intrigue of The Gay Lord Quex (1899). 



186 THE MODERN DRAMA 

Then, gathering his powers with an almost visible 
effort, he produced his most elaborate and am- 
bitious drama in Ins ( 1901 ). The merits of that 
piece are solid and obvious. Iris, as a character, 
is incontestably alive and permanent ; the portrait 
of Maldonado is earnestly attempted and vividly 
elaborated; the last interview between Lawrence 
Trenwith and Iris is not without true pathos; the 
ending is, for once, unafraid of its own inherent 
necessities. But the base of all this excellent 
structure is built on stubble. For the drama is 
that art in which men shall go through the recog- 
nisable gestures of their mortal fate driven by an 
inner impulse, not by the tug and thrust of the 
deviser's clever mechanism.'^-Now the action of 
Iris is wholly conditioned on two external acci- 
dents and one piece of shameless trickery.^ The 
impetus that starts the play is the unusual will 
left by Iris' husband ; the turning point of the ac- 
tion comes fortuitously from without, through the 
absconding of Archibald Kane ; to force the catas- 
trophe Iris must write a letter, tear it up, scatter 
the fragments on the floor, and fail to observe 
Maldonado gather them in her very presence. 
Thus only does he learn of her apparent treachery 
and returns to drive her out into the streets. 
Ins was again followed by a rapid decline in 



THE DRAMA IN ENGLAND 187 

Pinero's work. In 1904 appeared Letty, mawk- 
ish, melodramatic and unreal; in 1905 A Wife 
Without a Smile which is farce at its most trivial. 
But the best quality in Pinero is his ever resur- 
gent ambition which wrung from him a new group 
of serious attempts at the art and not at the trade 
of the drama. He reaches his highest point in 
The Thunderbolt (1909). It is still, to be sure, 
the old Pinero. The action of the play is still 
based on the destruction of a will. But at last 
the exposition in the excellent first act is of char- 
acter rather than of incidenvtne several members 
of the Mortimore family are not only well ob- 
served but projected without caricature fthe con- 
fession of James Mortimore in the closing act is a 
dramatic solution for once conditioned in the un- 
contorted nature of men and things. 

But is this the real Pinero? Or is it the crea- 
tor of Lavender, of Letty, of Lily Parradell in 
The "Mind the Paint" Girl (1912)? Is it pos- 
sible to take quite seriously the analysis of Paula 
Tanqueray, the defence of Agnes Ebbsmith, the 
judgment upon Iris Bellamy, since Pinero re- 
turns unceasingly to a flattery of the coarsest de- 
lusions and the most worthless tastes'? No one 
doubts that there are decent girls in the chorus, 
girls with their own proper notions of honesty and 



188 THE MODERN DRAMA 

self-respect. But is it not pandering to the 
vainest of romantic follies to base a play upon the 
promise of married happiness between a high- 
minded and sensitive gentleman and a girl whose 
social instincts would have driven him to despera- 
tion, the very thought of whose mother would 
have driven him to drink? I can but point once 
more to Mr. Galsworthy's treatment of the same 
theme in The Eldest Son (1909). Before the 
plain nobility of truth Pinero's devices shrink 
aside and lie prone with the other lumber of the 
green-room and the property man. 

In reality it is not difficult to sum up Pinero's 
character as a dramatic artist. His is a conven- 
tional mind under the impact of a world in the 
throes of moral protest and readjustment; his, a 
conventional technique under the impact of a 
nobler and a plainer art. In the direction of that 
finer art his progress has been less than moderate. 
With the intellectual dilemma he has dealt by 
pleading for certain exemptions from the full 
rigour of the social law. Except in Iris he has al- 
ways treated the problem of sex as one of social, 
rather than of personal reality and conflict. In 
that emphasis upon the external social order his art 
is akin to the art of the French stage, but he lacks 



THE DRAMA IN ENGLAND 189 

the latter' s passion, its keen intelligence, its con- 
viction and its style. The extraordinarily high 
position which he holds in the world of the Eng- 
lish drama is sure to decline rapidly with the in- 
troduction of such critical standards as are unhes- 
itatingly applied in every other department of 
imaginative literature. 

Ill 

A brief and curious interlude in the history of 
the modern English drama is furnished by the 
comedies of Oscar Wilde (1856-1900). Struc- 
turally these comedies are frankly of the old, triv- 
ial, intriguing kind. Yet there is a very vital 
difference between The Profligate on the one hand, 
and Lady Windermere's Fan ( 1893) on the other. 
Pinero appeals to our sense of moral sincerity and 
our sense of truth only to insult them; his dia- 
logue apes the speech of man and is but the ver- 
biage of a degraded stage. In a word, The Profli- 
gate is supposed to be a picture of life. Lady 
Windermere's Fan makes no such pretensions. 
The play seeks neither to compete with life nor, 
in any close sense, to interpret it. To assail the 
comedy of Wilde for a want of reality were like 
taking a tuberose to task for not being an oak- 



190 THE MODERN DRAMA 

tree. The pleasure which the flower gives is brief 
and a trifle enervating, but it is genuine of its 
kind. 1 

Wilde succeeds in lifting his comedies out of 
life — not, to be sure, above it — by the style of his 
dialogue. The noblest dramatic dialogue is that 
which creates the illusion of human speech; the 
basest that which pretends to create such an illu- 
sion and gives us the sentimental formulas of 
melodrama. Wilde neither succeeds nor fails 
upon such terms. His dialogue, like Congreve's, 
is an exercise in style. And for such an exercise 
he was admirably fitted by gifts and training. 
He has the icy glitter of sheer wit, the sparkling 
perfection of phrase, the ringing balance of 
rhythm. Nor is this all. He has moments of a 
larger and more subtly modulated eloquence. As- 
suredly the plea of Mrs. Arbuthnot in the last act 
of A Woman of No Importance (1893) is arti- 
ficial, and so is Goring's reproof of Lady Chiltern 
in An Ideal Husband (1895). But the artifice 
is the legitimate artifice of fine oratory — calcu- 
lated, of course, and consciously effective, but 
with a glow of real conviction, a throb of true 

1 This is, of course, but the old plea of Charles Lamb for 
the comedy of the Restoration. Wilde, I think, may legiti- 
mately claim it for himself. 



THE DRAMA IN ENGLAND 191 

feeling under the external flash and ring of its 
periods. 

I have called the brilliant comedy of Wilde an 
interlude in the history of the modern English 
drama. It is also a prelude to the greater comedy 
of Mr. Shaw. For the popular impression that 
Wilde's wit is merely affected nonsense is the 
result of apocryphal anecdote, and of Mr. 
Hichen's dazzling satire The Green Carnation 
(1895). Mr* Shaw, I take it, would not repu- 
diate, as at least prophetic, the sayings of Lord 
Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance: 
" Women represent the triumph of matter over 
mind." "The history of woman is the history of 
the worst form of tyranny the world has ever 
known — the tyranny of the weak over the 
strong." In An Ideal Husband, moreover, Wilde 
practises a subjective type of stage-direction 
which is Shavian or nothing. "They are types 
of exquisite fragility. Watteau would have 
loved to paint them." Sir Robert Chiltem "is 
not popular. Few personalities are." And is 
not Phipps the butler an adumbration, at least, of 
that remarkable class of serving-men to which be- 
long Balmy Walters and the redoubtable Enry 
Straker*? 



192 THE MODERN DRAMA 

Wilde's four comedies are of very unequal 
value. Lady Windermere's Fan is saved from 
melodrama and triviality only by the artistic dis- 
tinction of its style. The Importance of Being 
Earnest (1895) * s mere farce, though of an airy 
and not quite graceless kind. A Woman of No 
Importance would be almost as purely a conversa- 
tion as Shaw's Getting Married, could one snap 
off the brief climax of each act. His best play 
is An Ideal Husband. A just and powerful idea 
is justly and powerfully developed. The small 
Chinese puzzle of intrigue in the second act is 
carried off by the unfailing brilliancy and vigour 
of the dialogue. It is an artificial comedy 
touched with reflection and imagination. In its 
necessarily almost obsolete kind it is a minor but 
authentic masterpiece. 

IV 

Mr. George Bernard Shaw (b. 1856) is a 
writer of comedy with a tragic cry in his soul. 
In the Middle Ages he would have been a great 
saint, appalled at the gracelessness of men's hearts, 
militant for the kingdom of God. To-day he is 
a playwright, appalled at the muddleheadedness 
of the race, a fighter for the conquest of reason 
over unreason, of order over disorder, of economy 



THE DRAMA IN ENGLAND 193 

over waste. His mind abhors the frantic contra- 
dictions at the root of things; it cries out like a 
hurt animal over the blind mysticisms by which 
we are swayed. Many reformers have attacked 
opinions, institutions, laws. Mr. Shaw attacks 
the emotional basis on which Western civilisation 
is founded. In his moments of mere eccentricity 
he may jeer at science. But he is himself the last 
inevitable corollary of the scientific spirit. And 
the fact that, holding the views which he does, he 
has not been silenced as a madman, stamps him 
as a portent. 

I have already mentioned his moments of mere 
eccentricity. They occur in states of wild, in- 
tellectual exuberance when he applies his method 
with fierce and joyful indiscriminateness. But let 
no 

"comfortable moles whom what they do 
Teaches the limits of the just and true," 

flatter themselves that Bernard Shaw is a jester. 
His theories and his rebellions may rise up, to- 
morrow, in living form, and obliterate those who 
had doubted his fierce earnestness. 

As becomes a child of the scientific spirit, Shaw 
is a naturalist ; he wants the truth. Only he does 
not see his truth in the garbs which historical 



194 THE MODERN DRAMA 

civilisation has thrown over us. He wants man 
naked, stripped of his false pretensions, his dig- 
nified gestures, his romantic illusions. He wants 
to know how the stark soul looks when it ceases 
to mutter its tribal incantations. Hell, in the 
Shavian gospel, is the home of sham. In Heaven 
the austere nakedness of truth is vigilant. 

Hence his method of attacking things is not 
to show them, but to show them up; not to de- 
scribe them, but to tell the truth about them — 
the merciless, devastating truth. And he has un- 
dertaken to tell the truth primarily about three 
things: Poverty, war and love. 

His attacks on poverty and war are his rights, 
as a confirmed modern, a socialist, and hence — 
though he may repudiate so old-fashioned a term 
— a utilitarian. For poverty is, in very truth, the 
root of all evil in that it makes men slaves. It 
is only an occasional Mrs. Warren who can even 
appear to rise from that abyss. The vast ma- 
jority of human creatures are simply stamped, 
face downward, into the mire. Nor is that 
slavery one to a wiser power, a more luminous 
purpose, but quite starkly to hunger, cold and 
dirt. Hence until society has conquered the sin 
and the disgrace of poverty, all other efforts and 
ideals of a collective character are futile. His 



THE DRAMA IN ENGLAND 195 

attack on war is less interesting and vital. For the 
glamour of war seemed to him to be becoming 
daily less real to our civilisation as a whole. To 
exhibit the typical romance of war, he went to a 
fairly primitive people living amid fairly primi- 
tive conditions. (Arms and The Man.) His 
theory has been invalidated by the sternest of ar- 
guments. 

There remains his heroic onslaught upon the 
sex morality of Christendom. That onslaught 
may be formulated somewhat as follows: The 
theory of your society is that marriage is sacred, 
that it ought to be permanent, and that it is the 
necessary expiation of every offence against the 
ideal virtue of chastity. The impulse of sex is, 
as a matter of hard fact, transitory in its nature 
and impersonal. Its occurrence between two hu- 
man beings is no ground for supposing that their 
permanent union will fulfil any of the nobler 
purposes of human life. Hence by making di- 
vorce difficult and indecent you condemn great 
numbers of men and women to a corroding and 
corrupting slavery; by inculcating the false no- 
tion that the transient impulse of passion must be 
paid for by a lifetime of responsibility, you force 
into existence, historically and actually, the trade 
of prostitution with all its attendant evils of deg- 



196 THE MODERN DRAMA 

radation and disease. Finally, by branding extra- 
marital motherhood with shame you deprive many 
women of the right to motherhood and, once more, 
pander to prostitution by driving men into the 
arms of women whose trade forbids the bearing 
of children. For it is a psychological fact that 
the more highly organised a man is, the more does 
he dread the deflection of his energies from ideal 
to merely procreative and domestic ends ; the more 
thoroughly a woman is endowed with the pas- 
sion of motherhood, the less is her continuous need 
of the conventional husband. In so far as that 
need is, at present, an economic one, it is dis- 
graceful both to the individual and to society, 
since it means the repudiation of the social value 
of that function on which the very existence of 
the race depends. 

Freedom, flexibility and health in the relations 
of the sexes — these are the ideals that Shaw has 
most at heart. These are the theme of his cen- 
tral work Man and Superman (1903), of Get- 
ting Married (1908), and, explicitly or im- 
plicitly, of passages and episodes in nearly all his 
plays. Now Shaw, I must repeat, is a utilitarian. 
He has a scorching "contempt for belles-lettres, ,, 
for art that is not didactic, above all, for happi- 
ness. Like all utilitarians he repudiates a multi- 



THE DRAMA IN ENGLAND 197 

plicity of final values. It is not enough for him 
that a thing is good; it must be good — for some- 
thing else. And it is Shaw's conception that a 
new order of relationship between the sexes will 
breed a nobler race — that race of supermen, 
namely, which will repair the miserable failures 
of our democracy, which will stamp out the crimes 
of war and poverty, the disgraces of slavery and 
disease. To this end has the Life Force been in 
travail thus far in vain. But the Life Force 
(which reminds one not a little of Spencer's Ab- 
solute that wells up in consciousness) is at last 
becoming purposeful and self-directing in the 
brain of philosophic man. Thus man (and here 
we touch the Pragmatists and the Bergsonians) 
helps to build, up a universe whose incessant as- 
piration is "to higher organisation, wider, deeper, 
intenser self-consciousness, and clearer self-under- 
standing." 

The trouble with this metaphysic is that it 
suits only a world of Shavians to whom "the true 
joy of life" is "the being used for a purpose recog- 
nised by yourself as a mighty one ; the being thor- 
oughly worn out before you are thrown on the 
scrap-heap; the being a force of nature." Need 
I say that that ideal has its own valour and nobil- 
ity? But we cannot all be social reformers or 



198 THE MODERN DRAMA 

martyrs to moral passion. To many of us the 
development of a free personality in a free uni- 
verse will always seem the only ideal that can 
make life worth living. We must be able to be- 
lieve that our efforts in art and thought have a 
measure, at least, of final validity, and our free 
personalities an enduring relation to something 
in which "there is no variableness neither shadow 
of turning." With a burning recognition of hu- 
man suffering and injustice we refuse to be 
earthly socialists because we dare not be cosmic 
socialists. 

But indeed I suspect Mr. Shaw himself of a 
splendid defection. He pleads with too personal 
a passion for the sexual liberation of mankind. 
He knows with too intense a knowledge that "of 
all human struggles there is none so treacherous 
and remorseless as the struggle between the artist 
man and the mother woman. Which shall use 
up the other? That is the issue between them." 
And he is himself that artist man, attributing to 
the efforts of his creative thought a spiritual im- 
port which transcends the ideals of the collectivist 
reformer and allies him to that company of free 
personalities — heroes in the Carlylian sense — 

"Whose having lived gives meaning to all life." 



THE DRAMA IN ENGLAND 199 

I seem scarcely, so far, to have been discussing 
a dramatist at all. But he must be a poor crea- 
ture indeed who is not stirred by the luminous 
sagacity, the daring thought, the intellectual pas- 
sion of Bernard Shaw. It is not necessary to 
agree with him at any point. Or, it is possible, 
as in my own case, to agree with him in a hundred 
details most heartily and not at all in his ultimate 
conclusions or his final aims. It is possible, in a 
word, to do an)^thing but ignore him. 

What must be abundantly clear is that the 
methods of so valorous a thinker cannot be cheap 
or conventional. With intrigue, with the bluster 
of external action, he has nothing to do. He is 
bent upon a much graver business. The struc- 
ture of his plays, as a matter of fact, corresponds 
to the development of thoughts; thoughts are 
dramatised; the evolution of his plays is purely 
intellectual. This does not mean that he has 
not, at will, a sufficiently firm grasp of the ma- 
terial world, or that he shirks, in his best plays, 
the concrete external factors of human life. In 
that respect, likewise, he is a naturalist to the 
backbone. 

Not so, however, in his dialogue. That is al- 
ways Shavian, even when the speech of his char- 



200 THE MODERN DRAMA 

acters is scrupulously naturalistic in its merely 
formal aspect. The style is always the same — 
the bare, sinewy, rapid, but undeviatingly prosaic 
eloquence of Bernard Shaw. It has light but no 
heat, and the light is always sharp and challeng- 
ing, never radiant or lustrous. 

And this unflagging energy of style brings me 
at last to the people who are supposed to use it — 
the characters of Bernard Shaw. Into that as- 
tonishing assemblage have stolen a few ordinary 
mortals: Candida's father, Cramp ton, in Tou 
Never Can Tell; Roebuck Ramsden in Man and 
Superman; the General in Getting Married. 
The rest, even the humblest, such as Bill Walker 
in Ma) or Barbara^ or Blanco Posnet in the play 
that shows him up, have the extraordinary ca- 
pacity of getting outside of their own skins. I 
am aware of the crudeness of my image. But 
Shaw wants no "moral attitudes," he wants truth; 
he wants "actual humanity instead of doctrinaire 
romanticism." Men and women, however, live 
and move and have their being in these moral 
attitudes; their psychical life is drenched in this 
doctrinaire romanticism. By being shown as con- 
stantly capable of stripping off the very texture 
of their inner life, of living an uninterrupted 
series of moments characterised by the highest 



THE DRAMA IN ENGLAND 201 

Shavian insight and sagacity, they cease to be in- 
dependent creatures at all, and become the mere 
images of men as reflected back by the hard, 
bright, unshadowed surface of their creator's mind. 
The truth is that human beings in this very hu- 
man world are sadly and even consistently mud- 
dleheaded. The real Mrs. Warren would have 
been able to build up her business, never its phi- 
losophy; the real Candida would have made Can- 
dida's choice in everlasting ignorance of Morrel's 
weakness and of Eugene's strength; the real Ann 
Whitfield would never have owned up to methods 
of which she was sublimely unconscious; the real 
Mrs. George was but a vulgar profligate. 

It will now be clear why I stressed the philoso- 
phy of Bernard Shaw. This remarkable writer 
is not, in the stricter sense, a creative artist at all. 
The sharp contemporaneousness and vividness of 
his best settings deceives us. His plays are 
the theatre of the analytic intellect, not the drama 
of man. They are a criticism of life, not in the 
sense of Arnold, but in the plain and literal one. 
His place is with Lucian rather than with 
Moliere. I do not mean that his dialogues do 
not play. They play admirably and they will 
be played increasingly as our English-speaking 
audiences grow in critical maturity. Few men 



202 THE MODERN DRAMA 

will assent to his views, but fewer still will care 
to deny themselves one of the most vivid and 
tonic experiences of our age — an intimate contact 
with that brave, that ruthless, that luminous mind. 



If Mr. Granville Barker's activity as a produc- 
ing manager accounts for the fewness of his plays, 
it is an activity to be sincerely regretted. For his 
contribution to the modern English drama is one 
of great originality and native power, even though 
I seem to discern in his work the meeting of two 
important influences. Mr. Barker's excellent 
translation of Schnitzler's Anatol points to one of 
these influences, an hundred bits of internal evi- 
dence point to the other, that of Mr. Shaw. One 
may go very far astray in analysing the conscious 
artistic processes of so close a contemporary. I 
venture the theory, however, that Mr. Barker has 
studied the structural technique of the German 
naturalists and has determined to carry their 
method the one possible step further. That is, 
at all events, consciously or unconsciously, what 
he has done. 

This technical procedure may be illustrated by 
observing the "curtains" of the eminent natural- 
istic artists, of Hauptmann or of Galsworthy. 



THE DRAMA IN ENGLAND 203 

In Rose Bernd, for instance, or in The Eldest 
Son each act ends with an observation which, in- 
evitable and unstudied though it be, marks by its 
special note and tone, a pause, and a stage in the 
spiritual rhythm of the action. That dramatic 
rhythm is gained by a series of exquisitely un- 
obtrusive emphases upon the significant, and by 
silent omission of the non-significant. In The 
Madras House (1909), however, which repre- 
sents the latest point in Mr. Barker's develop- 
ment, the rhythm of action — emphasis and sup- 
pression in the service of unity of effect — is aban- 
doned. Each act ends in the midst of a conver- 
sation; so does the whole play, and the stage- 
direction remarks : "She doesn't finish, for really 
there is no end to the subject." All of which 
means that Mr. Barker seeks to follow the broken 
rhythm of life — the helpless swaying hither and 
thither of human talk, the pause of embarrass- 
ment or sudden blankness which leads to irrele- 
vant changes of subject. In addition, he seeks 
to illustrate, as in the second act of The Madras 
House, the fact that human affairs run parallel to 
each other and have often no connection except 
the accidental one of a single man or woman's be- 
ing a participant in each. Thus the scandal 
among the employes of the house and the sale of 



204 THE MODERN DRAMA 

the house to the American, Eustice P. State, have 
nothing in common except that Philip Madras 
must, necessarily, give his attention to both. 
Each, to be sure has, upon reflection, a bearing 
upon the theme of the play which is, once more, 
the problem of sex. But from the aspect of fable 
and structure The Madras House marks a point at 
which the avoidance of artifice touches the nega- 
tion of form. 

Negation of form ! Having written the words, 
I am almost ready to retract them. For in truth 
The Madras House is one of the most fascinating 
of modern plays. Its strange inconsequentialities 
of structure, its act endings which trail off into 
a natural silence or simply blend with the cease- 
less hum of life seem but to sharpen the peculiar 
tang of art and thought, extremely keen and per- 
sonal, that exhales from the play. 

The thesis of The Madras House is no less ar- 
resting than its form. The gradual emancipation 
of woman in the West has led to the constant, en- 
ervating preoccupation with the instinct of sex. 
Society, politics, education — all bring men and 
women into contacts which are, consciously or not, 
sexually stimulating. The vast industries that 
serve the adornment of even the most cultured of 
modern women prove these very women to be pri- 



THE DRAMA IN ENGLAND 205 

marily bent upon emphasising the sexual appeal. 
To this menace there are two effective retalia- 
tions: one, that of the elder Madras, to segregate 
women as in the Orient, and let men do their work 
in the world in virile cleanness ; the other, that of 
the younger Madras, to force our civilisation to be 
less of a "barnyard" in spirit, to wring from it 
a culture that is not simply a veneer over sexual 
savagery. 

Scarcely less notable a play is Waste (1907). 
It has the same natural, unprogressive, eddying 
rhythm as The Madras House. The associative 
connections, the articulations of speech, are often 
hidden, just as in life. The theme of the play is 
the natural prelude to that of The Madras House. 
A statesman of the finest ideals is utterly ruined 
by a woman's false use of the freedom that men 
have given her. The scandal of her death 
through an illegal operation kills Trebell politic- 
ally; the fact itself wounds a far nobler side of his 
nature. And at the root of all the misery is 
woman's inability to rise to the contemplation of 
impersonal ends. Amy O'Connell basely shirks 
the glory of motherhood because Trebell cannot 
and will not profess a romantic infatuation for 
her. And even Trebell's admirable sister, at the 
hour of his deepest need, gently reproaches him 



206 THE MODERN DRAMA 

for never having thought of her during all the 
years of their common life. "No, I never have," 
he admits, "but I've never thought selfishly 
either." "That's a paradox," she replies, "I 
don't quite understand." And Trebell sums up 
the whole matter: "Until women do they'll re- 
main where they are . . . and what they are." 
I know few other dialogues or situations in the 
whole modern drama worth closer pondering for 
the light thrown on one of the most vexatious and 
wasteful problems of contemporary life. 

Mr. Barker's two earlier plays are less personal 
and hence of somewhat smaller significance. 
The Marrying of Anne Leete (1899) with which 
he began is an attempt to carry a specifically 
modern kind of psychology into the eighteenth 
century. One has an uncomfortable suspicion 
throughout the play that one is assisting at a 
masquerade, and that the real Anne Leete, ances- 
tress of the girl here acting a shadowy idealisation 
of her fate, would have married Lord John Carp 
and been vastly pleased with her coach and four. 
The Voysey Inheritance (1905) is a solid and 
convincing picture of a well-defined section of 
English society — an exact and finished piece of 
naturalistic dramaturgy. But it is Waste and The 
Madras House that bear witness to a dramatist of 



THE DRAMA IN ENGLAND 207 

all but the highest promise and originality, if 
time and circumstance will but assist Mr. Barker 
to an intenser productivity. 

In a volume of sketches and essays beautifully 
named The Inn of Tranquillity (1912) Mr. John 
Galsworthy (b. 1867) has a dozen pages called 
Some Platitudes Concerning the Drama. I take 
it that Mr. Galsworthy here uses the word plati- 
tude with a gentle and quiet irony not unchar- 
acteristic of him. For he does not, I am sure, 
nurse the delusion, pleasing as such a delusion 
would be, that the basic principles of naturalistic 
dramaturgy have as yet any general acceptance 
among the English-speaking peoples. But since 
it is the partial purpose of these pages to contrib- 
ute to such an acceptance, I cannot do better 
than sum up these principles once more in the 
faultless dignity and wisdom of Mr. Galsworthy's 
phrasing. 

"To set before the public no cut and dried codes, 
but the phenomena of life and character . . . 
requires a sympathy with, a love of, and a curi- 
osity as to things for their own sake. . . . Mat- 
ters change and morals change ; men remain — and 
to set men and the facts about them, down faith- 
fully, so that they draw for us the moral of their 



2o8 THE MODERN DRAMA 

natural actions, may also possibly be of benefit to 
the community. It is, at all events, harder than 
to set men and facts down, as they ought or ought 
not to be. . . . The true lover of the human race 
is surely he who can put up with it in all its forms, 
in vice as well as in virtue, in defeat as well as 
in victory. ... A good plot is that sure edifice 
which rises out of the interplay of circumstance on 
temperament, or of temperament on circumstance, 
within the enclosing atmosphere of an idea. A 
human being is the best plot there is. . . . He is 
organic. The art of writing true dramatic dia- 
logue is an austere art, denying itself all license, 
grudging every sentence devoted to the mere ma- 
chinery of the play, suppressing all jokes and epi- 
grams severed from character, relying for fun and 
pathos on the fun and tears of life. . . . The 
question of naturalistic technique will bear, in- 
deed, much more study than has yet been given it. 
The aim of the dramatist employing it is evi- 
dently to create such an illusion of actual life 
passing on the stage as to compel the spectator 
to pass through an experience of his own, to 
think and talk and move with the people he 
sees thinking, talking and moving in front of 
him." 

Mr. Galsworthy is the author of eight plays. 



THE DRAMA IN ENGLAND 209 

Of these one, Joy (1907), betrays a less happy 
mood and art than the others ; another, The Little 
Dream (1911), represents what has come to seem 
the naturalist's almost obligatory excursion into 
neo- romanticism. It is neither poetry nor prose; 
the author's imagination has profoundly possessed 
neither his substance nor his form. Here nega- 
tive criticism must end. Mr. Galsworthy's re- 
maining six plays are all masterpieces. They are : 
The Silver Box (1906), Strife (1909), The 
Eldest Son (1909), Justice (1910), The Pigeon 
(1912), The Fugitive (1913). 1 

The special note of Galsworthy's art is its re- 
straint. His vision is wonderfully keen and 
clear and sober. He is intensely watchful not 
to overstep the modesty of emotions and events. 
He is never showy, never violent, never a special 
pleader. In his plays the forces of life them- 
selves come into conflict and grow into crises with 
all the quiet impressiveness of an operation of 
nature. A man commits a crime; he is tried and 
punished. Workingmen strike and are forced to 
compromise. The inheritors of two sharply di- 
vided social traditions are on the point of mar- 

1 To these must now be added the severe dramatic apologue 
The Mob (1914). Fine as that piece is, it makes one fearful 
lest Mr. Galsworthy abandon "men and the facts about them" 
for the dramatic exploitation of the naked idea. 



210 THE MODERN DRAMA 

riage, and the division is seen to be too deep. A 
woman flees from a wretched union and wears 
herself out against the hard prison- walls of the 
social order. Each of these sentences sums up 
one of Galsworthy's fables. It also sums up a bit 
of the homespun stuff of the world's daily life. 
From that stuff Galsworthy, like Hauptmann and 
Hirschfeld, wrings beauty and terror, laughter 
and awe. 

In choosing the angle from which, at a given 
moment, to envisage life, Galsworthy is fond of 
selecting such living incidents as have in them- 
selves the inevitable structure of drama. In 
Strife, for instance, the first act consists of a di- 
rectors' meeting of the Trenartha Tin Plate 
Works. The second act shows the men in their 
wretchedness, their division and their need. The 
third act represents the final directors' meeting at 
which the compromise between capital and labour 
is accomplished. Justice also exhibits a succession 
of events which is quite simply that of life. In 
the first act poor Falder's crime and its piteous 
motives are brought to light. The second act 
shows his trial ; the third his punishment. In the 
last act we see him a ticket-of -leave man, crushed 
by the social machine. Galsworthy has not al- 
ways, of course, been able to attain such magnif- 



THE DRAMA IN ENGLAND 211 

icent severity of structure. Life itself forbids it. 
But he has always striven to approach it, econo- 
mising his strength for the creation of character. 

His stage-directions are often psychological and 
often contain a touch of generalisation. But such 
touches are never, as in Shaw or Barker, personal 
and polemic. They never violate the imperson- 
ality of dramatic art. They are full rather than 
lengthy, and attain such fulness by a frugal ex- 
actness of diction. Not infrequently they are de- 
scriptive. But, as a rule, Galsworthy creates his 
atmosphere by subtler and less obtrusive means. 
The raw and sordid cruelty of civilisation and of 
nature that hovers over the men's meeting in the 
second act of Strife is created by no visible arti- 
fice. It inheres in the situation, the hour and the 
mood. 

Galsworthy's dialogue is the best dramatic dia- 
logue in the language. Its illusion of reality is 
complete; its power of differentiating character 
from character rivals Hauptmann's. It is, fur- 
thermore, in his own excellent phrasing, "hand- 
made, like good lace; clear, of fine texture, fur- 
thering with each thread the harmony and 
strength of a design to which all must be subordi- 
nated." And that design is merely the rhythm of 
the "spiritual action." His power of character- 



212 THE MODERN DRAMA 

ising through the tone and temper and form of 
speech rises to admirable heights in the self-ex- 
pression of Mrs. Jones in The Silver Box, of the 
several working-men who address their fellows in 
Strife, of Cokeson, the clerk, in Justice, and of Sir 
William Cheshire in The Eldest Son. There are 
few happier or more characteristic touches in the 
dialogue of the modern drama than when Sir Wil- 
liam, profoundly stirred to a defence of his ideals 
and his class, turns to his wife with these words : 
"Nowadays they laugh at everything — they even 
laugh at the word lady — I married you, and I 
don't." But examples are invidious where al- 
most every phrase has the inevitable Tightness of 
this order of art at its best. I borrow a sentence 
classical in the traditions of our literature to ex- 
press the bare justice of this matter. Whoever 
wishes to attain a style in dramatic dialogue, ex- 
act but always restrained, natural but never redun- 
dant, must give his days and nights to the vol- 
umes of Galsworthy. 

This temperate and reasonable artist who, sur- 
veying man and his world, has never failed to put 
on 

"the enquirer's holy robe 
And purged, considerate mind," 

discovers that there arise from this survey, more 



THE DRAMA IN ENGLAND 213 

and more definitely as it is more closely pressed 
home, a series of moral and social dilemmas of 
literally tremendous force and import. These 
dilemmas form the intellectual content of the 
drama of Galsworthy. He sees them and is able 
to propound them by reason of the central passion 
of his soul, which is a passion for justice. Not 
the ordinary passion for justice of our daily papers 
and our daily speech, which means justice for some 
class, some individual or some cause — but justice 
for all. Galsworthy, in his proper person, for 
instance, is on the side of labour. Yet he has 
created no character more massive, heroic or mem- 
orable than old Anthony, the ruthless defender of 
the capitalistic class in Strife. 

Characteristically, then, his first play depicts 
the gross inequality in society's treatment of men, 
and ends with a cry for justice. The miserable 
and yet tragic Jones writhes in the hands of the 
constable and frees his soul : 

"Call this justice? What about 'im? 'E got drunk! 
'E took the purse — 'e took the purse but (in a muffled 
shout) it's 'is money got Hm off ! Justice!" 

And the whole deliberate callousness of the so- 
cial order is summed up by the fact that no de- 
fence answers the arraignment of Jones. The 



214 THE MODERN DRAMA 

magistrate rises and remarks : "We will now ad- 
journ for lunch." In this play only, however, is 
the wrong wholly on one side. We meet the first 
of the great dilemmas of Galsworthy in Strife. 

The men of the Trenartha works are on strike. 
Cold and hunger are upon them. They are aban- 
doned by the unions to whom their demands seem 
untimely. But Roberts sustains them, lashes 
them on to desperate resistance. He is not only 
a reformer and a born leader of men, but a man 
with a righteous personal grievance against cap- 
ital. He will not compromise. Neither will An- 
thony, chairman of the board of directors. Thus 
the great struggle concentrates itself in one com- 
manding personality on each side. The men de- 
liberate, but when Roberts is called away by his 
wife's death, they abandon him and accept the 
lesser demands which the union is willing to make 
for them. Similarly the directors outvote An- 
thony and accept the compromise. Roberts and 
Anthony, the strong men with strong convictions, 
are broken. The second-rate run the world 
through half-measures and concessions. Such vic- 
tory as there is remains with labour. But in our 
ears echoes the rumbling eloquence of old An- 
thony: "The men have been treated justly, they 
have had fair wages, we have always been ready 



THE DRAMA IN ENGLAND 215 

to listen to complaints. ... It has been said that 
masters and men are equal ! Cant ! There can 
be only one master in a house ! Where two men 
meet the better man will rule !" 

In Justice the dilemma is sharper. The eco- 
nomic structure of society on any basis, requires 
the keeping of certain compacts. It cannot en- 
dure such a breaking of these compacts as Falder 
is guilty of when he changes the figures on the 
cheque. Yet by the simple march of events it is 
overwhelmingly proven that society here stamps 
out a human life not without its fair possibilities 
— for eighty-one pounds. 

The Pigeon is like an exquisite epilogue to these 
stern dramas. What is society to do with its 
failures — failures from its own point of view 
only? For are not Guinevere Meegan and Tim- 
son and, above all, the inimitable Ferrand quite 
infinitely "jolly" as mere human creatures? 
That is the opinion of the artist Welwyn who 
goes for wisdom to his friends the professor, the 
judge and the priest: 

"According to Calway, we're to give the State all we 
can spare, to make the undeserving deserving. He's a 
professor; he ought to know. But old Hoxton's always 
dinning it into me that we ought to support private or- 
ganisations for helping the deserving, and damn the un- 



216 THE MODERN DRAMA 

deserving. And the vicar seems to be for a little bit of 
both. . . . And there's no fun in any of them." 

It is from the lips of the incorrigible vagrant Fer- 
rand that at last we hear wisdom. "There are 
some souls, Monsieur, that cannot be made tame." 
It is he, too, who propounds the final dilemma of 
society. "If you do not wish of us, you have but 
to shut your pockets and your doors — we shall 
die the faster." To which searching remark 
Welwyn, or society — whichever you please — can 
but answer falteringly: "But that, you know — 
we can't do it now — can we?" 

The Eldest Son and The Fugitive deal with 
the more vivid moral dilemmas of the personal 
life. Sir William Cheshire has just forced one 
of his game-keepers to marry a village girl whom 
the lad has wronged. He has upheld the moral 
law. Immediately he discovers that his eldest 
son has been guilty of the same conduct with Lady 
Cheshire's maid. And Bill insists that he will 
play fair and marry the girl. Sir William, for- 
getful of the moral law which he has enforced 
on his dependent, protests to his wife: 

"I say it would be a tragedy ; for you, and me, and all 
of us. You and I were brought up, and we've brought 
the children up, with certain beliefs, and wants, and 



THE DRAMA IN ENGLAND 217 

habits. A man's past — his traditions — he can't get rid 
of them. They're — they're himself! (Suddenly) It 
shan't go on !" 

Is not this utterly unanswerable? Was the mar- 
riage of the village lad and lass at all compara- 
ble, in the grim necessity of tragic consequences, 
to a marriage between Bill Cheshire and Freda? 
The girl and her father have the good sense to 
see this. But the moral law? . . . 

In his most recent play, The Fugitive, Gals- 
worthy has for the first time treated the subject 
of marriage. With his usual sobriety and quiet 
wisdom he has not chosen a union disrupted by 
violent or unwonted causes. "But why can't we 
be happy?" George Dedmond asks. And Clare 
returns the overwhelmingly sufficient and funda- 
mental answer: "I see no reason except that you 
are you and I am I." But this best of all pos- 
■ sible reasons is considered no reason at all at pres- 
ent. The force of the law and of public opinion 
are wholly on the husband's side. And Clare is 
neither a skilled worker nor "a saint and a mar- 
tyr." With complete inevitableness she is forced 
to the brink of prostitution — the only unskilled 
labour for a woman that pays. And since moral 
and physical inhibitions prevent her from taking 
the leap, there is left — just death. 



218 THE MODERN DRAMA 

Such are the plays of John Galsworthy. But 
these interpretative outlines scarcely touch the 
finest triumph of his art which lies in the creation 
of character. No modern dramatist, indeed, save 
Hauptmann and Schnitzler, can show within the 
limits of six pla)'S so memorable an array of hu- 
man figures: The Barthwick family and the 
Jones's in The Silver Box; Anthony and Roberts, 
Thomas and Harness and Rouse in Strife; the 
Hows, father and son, Cokeson, Falder and Ruth 
in Justice; Sir William Cheshire in The Eldest 
Son; the w T onderful Ferrand in The Pigeon; 
George and Clare Dedmond and Malise in The 
Fugitive. 

Galsworthy's activity as a dramatist extends 
but over a period of eight years. Yet I see a new 
novel by him make its appearance with a pang 
of apprehension and disappointment. For he, 
above all other men now in view, seems called 
and chosen as the great modern dramatist of the 
English tongue. 

VI 

The modern drama in England, represented by 
Shaw and Barker and Galsworthy, differs from 
the modern drama in Germany and in France not 
so vitally by its extent, as by the underlying cause 



THE DRAMA IN ENGLAND 219 

of that narrow extent — the lack of an adequate 
audience. Inheritors of the noblest literature 
since antiquity, possessors of names that have 
turned the current of the world's thought — the 
great mass of the English-speaking peoples is 
still imprisoned in the iron vise of moral in- 
flexibility and intellectual prejudice. On the- 
ology, on ethics, on art, opinions are still cur- 
rently held in England and America by people 
called intelligent which, in the central intellectual 
life of the world, have long passed into the region 
of history. /The only hope for the art of the 
drama, as for all higher forms of spiritual activity 
among us — and this applies most emphatically to 
us Americans — rests in the possibility that our 
universities may gradually assume, in the class- 
room and beyond it, their highest duty to the 
democracy: the creation of a large and cultured 
class, flexible in intellect, liberal in judgment, not 
shocked by plain speaking, nor insulted by art, 
nor outraged by the radiant face of truth, ? 



CHAPTER FIVE 

THE NEO-ROMANTIC MOVEMENT IN THE 
EUROPEAN DRAMA 



Before the naturalistic movement had conquered 
the stage, a protest was raised against it in the 
land of its origin. The protest was not led by 
reactionaries, but by young men nursing a new 
vision. Ostensibly they fought a literary method, 
in reality a philosophy of hard despair. To-day 
naturalism means probity of observation, an at- 
tempt to interpret life through itself. There is 
no vision, no hope for the soul of man that is not 
reconcilable with the naturalism which created 
Rose Bernd or Strife. In 1885 naturalism meant 
the positivistic denial of the existence of vision, 
of the reasonableness of hope. It was the literary 
embodiment of a doctrinaire science, a science 
which rapid and wonderful achievement had ren- 
dered arrogant. The echo of that arrogance is 
heard in the critical utterances of Zola. "An 
identical determinism rules the stone in the road 

and the brain of man;" "our works have the ex- 

220 



THE NEO-ROMANTIC DRAMA 221 

actness, the solidity and the practical applications 
of works of science." He is scornful of tKose 
who object to the experimental novel "through 
some more or less conscious attachment to reli- 
gious or philosophic beliefs." The temper of that 
last phrase is noteworthy. Positivism not only 
fought an impossible dogma; it denied the possi- 
bility of any philosophic interpretation of the sum 
of things. The real character of that early pro- 
test against naturalism was not long unrecog- 
nised. It was made, as M. Edouard Rod said 
in 1891, "because naturalism was the literary ex- 
pression of an entire positivistic and materialistic 
movement which no longer answers any actual 
needs." 

Creatively the French protest against natural- 
ism took two forms: that of the psychological 
novel and that of the symbolist movement in 
poetry. The five young artists who, in 1887, is- 
sued a public manifesto against the "superficial 
observation and the inordinate stressing of the 
note of ordure" in Zola's La Terre^ were all 
psychological novelists. The group, however, did 
not include M. Paul Bourget whose excellent mas- 
terpiece Le Disciple (1889) sums up the moral 
and artistic reaction against naturalism of the 
early positivistic type. 



222 THE MODERN DRAMA 

This development in the art of fiction did not 
touch the drama at any point. It is otherwise 
with the symbolist movement in poetry from 
which proceeds, directly or indirectly, the neo-ro- 
mantic drama of Maeterlinck, of Hugo von Hof- 
mannsthal and of William Butler Yeats. That 
movement protested against the marmoreal out- 
line, the steely clang, the proud impersonality of 
the Parnassian school. But its protest, too, was 
in reality a deeper one. KFor the impersonal 
aloofness of Leconte de Lisle is but a gesture by 
which he seeks to hide his grinding despair./ His 
Dies Irae {Poemes antiques, 1852) and his V Il- 
lusion supreme {Poemes tragiques, 1884) are 
beautiful and terrible at once. But that way 
madness lies. There are philosophies which are 
unendurable not because men are cowards, but 
because they are men. 

The official founder of the symbolist school, 
Stephane Mallarme (1842-1898) published his 
collected verses in 1888. But the real master of 
the movement, Paul Verlaine (1844-1896), a 
lyrical poet of the first order, had published his 
mature collections Sagesse and Jadis et naguere 
in 1881 and 1885. Beneath a good deal of 
merely verbal mysticism and obscurity in their 
theoretical writings the aim of the symbolists ap- 



THE NEO-ROMANTIC DRAMA 223 

pears clearly and intelligibly enough: to depict 
the frail, the exquisite and fugitive movements 
of the soul as these necessarily blend with and 
identify themselves with the external appear- 
ances which our sense perceives. In this aspect 
nature is, in sober truth, an array of symbols of 
the soul's life. These symbols and their subjec- 
tive content the new school sought to render in 
fluid and trembling forms, in the haunting music 
of a flexible versification. Both their theory and 
their method have been explained by Hugo von 
Hofmannsthal. "A certain gesture with which 
you leaped from a tall wagon; a sultry, starless 
summer night; the odour of moist stones in a hall- 
way; the sensation of icy water which a fountain 
made to sparkle over your hands — all your inner 
life is bound to a few thousands of such earthly 
things, all your exaltations, all your yearning, all 
your ecstasies. . . . There are combinations of 
words from which, as the spark from the beaten 
flint, break forth the landscapes of the soul, which 
are immeasurable as the starry heaven and stretch 
out into space and time." Mr. Yeats has summed 
up the same fundamental idea. "What is litera- 
ture but the expression of moods by the vehicle 
of symbol and incident*?" 

From the symbolist's escape out of the world 



224 THE MODERN DRAMA 

of hard and objective forms which science pre- 
sents, into the twilight of the soul where the seer 
and his vision are one, it was but a step toward 
an open scepticism of that science with its neces- 
sary assertion of the complete externality to the 
knower of the thing known. The whole develop- 
ment of thought from evasive to militant neo-ro- 
manticism is expressed with unsurpassable just- 
ness by Anatole France. I gather these highly 
significant passages from the four volumes of his 
La vie litter aire. "It is most clear that the strong 
confidence we once had in science is more than 
half lost. . . . What are these things you call 
sciences, if you please"? Spectacles, no more, no 
less. . . . An argument pursued on any complex 
subject will never prove anything but the ability 
of the mind that conducts it. . . . There is no 
such thing as objective criticism, any more than 
there is such a thing as objective art, and people 
who flatter themselves that they are putting any- 
thing but their own selves into their works are 
dupes of the most fallacious delusion. . . . We 
know very well to-day that the romance of the 
universe is as deceptive as any other, but at that 
time the books of Darwin were our Bible. . . . 
The things which touch us most nearly, which 
seem to us loveliest and most desirable are pre- 



THE NEO-ROMANTIC DRAMA 225 

cisely those which will always remain vague to 
us and, in part, mysterious. Beauty, virtue, 
genius — these will forever guard their secret. 
Neither the charm of Cleopatra, nor the sweet- 
ness of Saint Francis, nor the poetry of Racine, 
will ever submit to formulation; if these things 
sustain a relation to science, it is to a science 
blended with art, with intuition, a restless and 
ever unfinished one. That science or rather that 
art exists: it is philosophy, ethics, history, criti- 
cism, in brief, the whole beautiful romance of 
humanity." The protest against science has risen 
spontaneously to the lips of every neo-romanti- 
cist. "The scientific movement is ebbing a little 
everywhere . . ." writes Mr. Yeats, "and I am 
certain that everywhere literature will return 
once more to its old extravagant, phantastical ex- 
pression, for in literature, unlike science, there are 
no discoveries, and it is always the old that re- 
turns." And, in another place, he speaks with a 
brave and mystical beauty: "Let us go forth, 
the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey the 
heart longs for, and have no fear. Everything 
exists, everything is true, and the earth is only a 
little dust under our feet." 

These quotations are somewhat long. But they 
serve, as nothing else can, to mark the spiritual 



226 THE MODERN DRAMA 

temper of the neo-romantic movement, the 
grounds of the protest against naturalism. That 
protest, so eloquently phrased was, after all 5 po- 
lemic and hence unjust. Objective truth, cold, 
definite, its content eternally separate from the 
knowing mind — that is beyond our reach. In so 
far the neo-romanticists emphasised a fact of su- 
preme value. But there are orders of experience 
which, granting the school its own ground, rise 
oftener, more definitely and more concretely into 
the field of human consciousness than others. 
The kinds of experience set down in Michael 
Kramer, in Amants, in The Eldest Son belong to 
this type. It is the rarer and more incommun- 
icable soul in which arises the type of experience 
interpreted in Hofmannsthal's Der Tor und der 
Tod or in Yeats' The King's Threshold. Hence 
whenever naturalistic art ceases to base itself on 
a shallow positivism and thus abandons its one 
mistake, it reassumes at once the high human 
validity that belongs to it. Nor, finally, were 
the neo-romanticists willing to grant naturalism 
its disciplinary and formative influence upon their 
own work. Yet what so fundamentally differen- 
tiates them from the romantics of the early nine- 
teenth century is the solidity of their psychology. 



THE NEO-ROMANTIC DRAMA 227 

The supreme merit of Henry of Aue and of 
Chanteder arises from the fact that beauty and 
vision grow here from nothing extravagant and 
phantastical but from genuine experiences in the 
soul of man. And that genuineness is the gift 
of naturalism. 

The liberation of speculative thought from the 
cold weight of positivism went hand in hand with 
the liberation of beauty. From 1884 to 1892 ap- 
peared the successive parts of Nietzsche's Also 
sprach Zarathustra; in 1895 Ferdinand Brunet- 
iere's highly symptomatic La Science et la Reli- 
gion; in 1897 William James announced in The 
Will to Believe the first crystallisation of a point 
of view which we shall see again and again arising 
spontaneously from the poetic drama of the age. 
The naturalistic drama, meanwhile, progressed un- 
interruptedly. But pure form and pure vision 
united once more in the attempt to offer a syn- 
thetic interpretation of life. And there I have 
touched upon the true difference between these 
two orders of art: naturalism sees life analyti- 
cally ; neo-romanticism sees it synthetically. Nat- 
uralism sets down the facts of experience; neo- 
romanticism (or classicism, for that matter) dis- 
tils what seems to it their essence into significant 



228 THE MODERN DRAMA 

forms. Naturalism describes love and hate and 
the many things that fill the world; neo-romanti- 
cism meets 

"under the boughs of love and hate, 
In all poor foolish things that live a day, 
Eternal beauty wandering on her way." 

II 

As early as 1883 the symbolist movement in 
French poetry had gained a number of young ad- 
herents in Belgium. From this group, which ex- 
pressed itself through a periodical, La jeune Bel- 
gique, arose the founder of the symbolist drama, 
Maurice Maeterlinck (b. 1862). In the antholo- 
gies of the symbolist lyric his name stands among 
the names of Verhaeren, Viele-Griffin, Moreas 
and Kahn, signed to verses of a strange and evan- 
escent beauty. These verses, it may be noted, had 
a profound influence upon the work of our Amer- 
ican poet, Richard Hovey. But toward the end 
of the decade Maeterlinck turned to the drama 
and published La Princesse Maleine (1889). 

His activity as a dramatist falls into two very 
distinct periods. His symbolist plays precede the 
year 1901 and end with Soeur Beatrice. The 
appearance of Monna Vanna in 1902 inaugurates 



THE NEO-ROMANTIC DRAMA 229 

a series of dramas differing markedly both in char- 
acter and value from his earlier work. 

In the plays of his first period he "has disen- 
gaged art from the details of actuality" and 
achieved a "mystic density" of texture. But a 
doom more dread and terrifying than any posi- 
tivistic determinism, a blind and malevolent fate, 
strikes with breathlessness and awe these kings 
and princesses and lovers by the green shimmer 
of their inland seas. The strange iterations of 
their speech ^with its monotony as of drippins 
water in an echoing vault deepens the impression 
of flickering helplessness. And man here has built 
his very habitations as a reflex of his crushing 
doom. For in the castles^J^ong corridors con- 
fuse the feverish souls who walk in them and lead 
their steps to subterranean caverns where a dead 
and creeping sea beats at the crumbling walls. 
There is neither hope nor faith. Only the mad- 
man crosses himself. There is not even spiritual 
action in this drama, for there is no escape, how- 
ever fleeting or deceptive, from the malignity of 
fate. "You never can tell if you have made a 
movement for yourself, or if it be chance that 
has met with you," it is said in Alladine et 
Palomides (1894). Ablamore, in the same play, 
says: "You did what was ordained and so did 



230 THE MODERN DRAMA 

I." The same thought is stressed in Pelleas et 
Melisande (1892). "He has done what he 
probably must have done." Fate is ever pres- 
ent, like the dread queen in La Mort de Tin- 
tagiles (1894) whom men must "love with a 
great, unpitying weight on their souls." 

These early plays then, in so far as they have 
any recognisable relation to human experience, in- 
terpret it — by a shadowy parallel creation — in 
terms of the strictest fatalism. By a parallel cre- 
ation! For human life is in no wise, however 
subtle, imitated here. Men may be fated, but 
they are fated, above all, to a conviction of free- 
dom at every moment of action. 

The subjects of most of Maeterlinck's sym- 
bolist plays represent merely his peculiar atmos- 
phere investing themes that have long been the 
possession of literature and legend. La Princesse 
Maleine is a long variation upon Shakespearean 
motifs: the terror and expectancy at the opening 
of Hamlet^ the sense of doom in the great mur- 
der scene in Macbeth, At times the reminiscence 
becomes almost verbal, as in the saying of the 
old king: "It would take all the waters of the 
flood to baptise me now." Pelleas et Melisande 
is clearly a variation upon the story of Paolo and 
Francesca; Alladine et Palomides, of the legend 



THE NEO-ROMANTIC DRAMA 231 

of Tristran and Iseult. Ariane et Barbe-bleu 
(1901) is, as its title indicates, a symbolist in- 
terpretation of the tale of Bluebeard; Soeur Beat- 
rice (1901) deals with the legend so powerfully 
told by John Davidson in his Ballad of a Nun. 
Les Sept Princesses (1891), La Mort de Tin- 
tagiles (1894), and Aglavaine et Selysette 
(1896) have no legendary background. They 
are wholly atmospheric — human wraiths sway in 
the bitter winds of fate. 

These plays are full of memorable touches. 
Some are touches of pathos, as in La Princesse 
Maleine: "If you had at least put her to death 
in the open air! But here, in a little room! In 
a poor little room!" Some are touches of a 
poignant imaginative charm, as that description 
in La Mort de Tintagiles: "There reigned such 
a silence that the falling of a ripe fruit in the 
park called faces to the windows." But the most 
sympathetic and patient reader will, at length, 
weary of the monotony of the point of view and 
of the atmosphere of these dramas. I must not, 
upon the principles of early symbolism, ask so 
crude a question as: What, in the end, is it all 
about? I content myself with pointing out that 
the poverty of intellectual content — I can discern 
in all these plays but the one idea of fatalism — 



232 THE MODERN DRAMA 

needed, to make it supportable, a far richer, more 
varied and more flexibly imaginative medium than 
Maeterlinck has ever been able to command. 

I have purposely left three plays of Maeter- 
linck's first period to the last. For in these three 
his method takes on a higher and finer meaning; 
they deal impressively and nobly, through such 
synthetic symbolism as the pure theories of the 
school demand, with universal facts of human ex- 
perience: the suddenness of death's imminence; 
the dazed searching for faith; the solitariness of 
the soul. I have already named the three plays 
by indicating their themes: Ulntruse (1890), Les 
Aveugles (1890), Ulnterieur (1894). 

Here we have symbolism at its purest and most 
exquisite. Death is not named in Ulntruse, nor 
faith in Les Aveugles, nor loneliness and division 
in Ulnterieur. But so exquisite is the adapta- 
tion of the symbolical incidents and imagery that 
the universal truth is in each instance brought 
overwhelmingly home. The forest of the world, 
for example, in Les Aveugles has "an eternal 
look" despite the death of man's immemorial 
faith. The blindness of men cannot discern that 
look. Yet there are happy souls who in the vis- 
ible presence of faith's death still smell "an odour 
of flowers about us." Man, the reasoner and pos- 



THE NEOROMANTIC DRAMA 233 

itivist, answers sadly: "I smell only the smell 
of the earth." Ulnterieur is mere perfection in its 
kind. A thousand human sorrows are summed 
up in it, a thousand grievous estrangements. The 
sayings of the Old Man beside that haunting win- 
dow have a touch of immortal loveliness and of 
timeless wisdom. In the brief compass of this 
little play the symbolical drama in prose and the 
art of Maeterlinck both reach their unmistakable 
culmination. 

With Monna Vanna (1902) he conquered the 
European stage and became a conventional play- 
wright. The speeches of Guido's father and of 
Giovanna herself still keep a touch of the old 
aloofness, the old estrangedness in a mortal world. 
But the atmosphere is formed of the traditional 
blood and lust and gold of the early Renaissance; 
the central incident is of an Elizabethan violence ; 
the resolution of the dramatic conflict commands 
the assent of neither the imagination nor the rea- 
son. Sudermann might well have arranged these 
very effective struggles that compel one's momen- 
tary attention but leave one's deeper sense of both 
poetry and reality affronted and betrayed. 

The art of Marie Madeleine (1910) is purer 
and less popular. The contrast of Longinus' 
cold and melancholy wisdom with the passionate 



234 THE MODERN DRAMA 

and more human hopefulness of the new faith 
rings true in itself and is dramatically of fine tem- 
per. Nor is it easy to urge a definite objection 
against the result of that conflict by which Mary 
abandons her Master to save her Lord. The at- 
mosphere of the land is indicated and the mood 
of those few solemn days. But throughout the 
play there is a slight sense of strain, of effort, of 
an essentially fragile and unhuman genius deal- 
ing with matters too large for its delicate grasp — 
a weaver of wind-shaken tapestry striving to hew 
Titans out of the rocks of the earth. 

Maeterlinck's best-known contribution to the 
modern drama is UOiseau bleu ( 1909). The suc- 
cess of the play has been epoch-making, especially 
in the United States and in Russia. It has carried 
his name where he was hitherto unknown or a 
shadow ; it has earned him a fortune extraordinary 
even in these days of dramatic profits. So soon 
as one regards the play quite closely the apparent 
riddle of this huge success is solved. The form 
is symbolical to be sure, but not with the close 
and intimate symbolism of Les Aveugles or In- 
terieur. The play consists rather of a series of lit- 
tle allegories which he who runs may read and he 
who listens with but half an ear may understand. 
And what is the content of these allegories? 



THE NEO-ROMANTIC DRAMA 235 

That the dead live in our memories of them (Act 
II, Scene I), that simple pleasures are best and 
most harmless (III, II), that man is conquering 
disease (III, I), and that he will more and more 
subdue the forces of nature (V, III), and finally, 
that happiness need not be sought afar but waits 
for us at home. Briefly, the play expresses a cheap 
and shallow optimism. No, rather a pseudo-op- 
timism that deceives the crowd. For if the dead 
live only in our memory of them, the hope of the 
world is indeed a self-deception. And if that 
hope be a deceptive one the progress of both medi- 
cine and invention is but a drug to palliate the 
agony of our path to corruption. It little mat- 
ters whether a train run fast or slow, on a good 
roadbed or bad, if in ten minutes it is doomed 
to plunge over the edge of a cliff into eternal 
nothingness. 

Looked at in detail UOiseau bleu will be seen 
to contain not a few charming and poetic touches. 
It is the work, after all, of a man of genius, but 
of one whose genius attained but a few moments 
of perfect expression and whose really masterly 
and memorable work posterity will probably 
gather between the covers of one tiny volume hold- 
ing Ulntruse, Les Aveugles and Interieur, 



236 THE MODERN DRAMA 

III 

In the land of its origin symbolism never 
reached the stage. The symbolical drama is a cre- 
ation of children of the great mystical races — 
the Germanic Maeterlinck and Hauptmann, the 
Jewish Hofmannsthal, the Irish Yeats. The 
work of the foremost neo-romantic dramatist of 
France is symbolical only as all poetry is sym- 
bolical in its imaginative texture and its final 
meaning, but in no special or esoteric sense. 

Edmond Rostand (b. 1868), a Frenchman of 
the South, son of an eminent publicist and scholar 
of Marseilles, is one of the most remarkable, one 
of the most widely heralded and, in English- 
speaking countries, one of the least known writ- 
ers of our time. For Rostand's virtue lies in his 
form, in the abundance and splendour of his po- 
etic eloquence. But it is no easy matter to read 
him with the French of Stratford-atte-Bowe, 
current among us since the days of Chaucer's 
Prioress. Nor, on the other hand, is it possible 
to gain any notion of his power from the cur- 
rent American translations of his two best plays. 
That of Cyrano de Bergerac is in wooden blank 
verse; that of Chantecler in bald prose. Is not 
that an instance of incompetence glorying in its 



THE NEO-ROMANTIC DRAMA 237 

shame? Hence I shall illustrate this interpreta- 
tion of his work by translations of several pas- 
sages in which, substituting of course the English 
heroic verse for the French Alexandrine, I have 
attempted to present a shadow, at least, of his real 
qualities. 

He opened his career as a dramatist in 1894 
with a comedy in verse called Les Romanesques,. 
The title points to a gentle polemic intention, 
anti-naturalistic of course, which is deftly but dis- 
tinctly stressed in several passages. "The scene 
is laid wherever you please, if only the costumes 
v be pretty." The hero and the heroine are intro- 
duced in the act of reading the story of those 
"immortal lovers," Romeo and Juliet. A hint is 
borrowed from that play, another from Troilus 
and Cressida. Action and character are of the 
slightest and are intentionally attuned to the tra- 
ditional moods of romance. But the whole play 
sings and trills like a garden full of birds, an 
early presage of the poetic richness and fecundity 
of Rostand's genius. At the play's end several 
of the characters turn to the audience, even as 
Rosalind did at the close of As Tou Like It, and 
offer a description and defence of it in the alter- 
nate strains of a rondel : 



238 THE MODERN DRAMA 

"Love at his flute within a garden close, 
Rest for our nerves from all these bitter plays ; 
O'er scenes by Watteau gentle music flows, 
A brief and honest tale our author shows 
Of parents, lovers, walled and flowery ways 
And costumes clear and rimes and roundelays." 

A touch of the merely trivial and pretty appar- 
ent now and then in Les Romanesques was strictly 
eliminated by Rostand from his second play La 
Princess e lointaine (1895). The story of the 
play, that of the troubadour Rudel and the Lady 
of Tripoli, is well-known through Browning's 
poem. Rostand has given the episode, so ex- 
traordinarily poetic in itself, a somewhat deeper 
meaning. The love of Rudel for the far away 
princess becomes in the play, quite naturally, the 
type of all disinterested striving, of all loyalty to 
an unseen good. This inner sense of the story 
is expressed in the really golden lyric of Rudel 
which echoes and re-echoes throughout the play. 

"O Love supreme that burns 
Hopeless of love's returns ; 
Tireless by night it yearns, 

And day! 
With such vain dreams that are 
Loftier than life can mar 
I love the Princess far 

Away." 



THE NEO-ROMANTIC DRAMA 239 

The scenes on shipboard and at the lady's court 
are sharply visualised. But the chief merit of 
the play is in the lilt and ripple, the brightness 
and iridescence of the beautiful verses. 

But neither the unwearied and unwearying 
magnificence of his Alexandrines nor the three 
marvellous songs of the woman of Samaria could 
save Rostand's play of that name (La Samari- 
taine, 1896) from artistic failure. His gorgeous 
Latin romanticism is glaringly out of place in the 
stern bareness of that Hebraic world. When 
finally Jesus appears as an acting and speaking 
character, one turns away from M. Rostand as 
from an admirable friend suddenly guilty of some 
gross error of taste. 

That error, however, was easily forgotten in 
the unparalleled public triumph of the following 
year (1897) which witnessed the appearance of 
Cyrano de Bergerac. Rostand's verse had, per- 
haps, been more truly poetical and of a more en- 
gaging sweetness in his earlier plays. But never 
before had it been so brave, so brilliant or so copi- 
ous. And the splendour of execution is here sup- 
ported by a solid substructure in the shape of a 
first-rate poetic study of character. For Cyrano 
is superbly alive. There is no question as to the 
man's earthborn reality. A dreamer, a lover and 



240 THE MODERN DRAMA 

a poet, cursed with a nose to make children scream 
and women laugh! What would you have him 
be but truculent, embittered, wildly independent'? 
What could he do but nurse his enforced renun- 
ciations in the solitude of his soul and clothe 
them with what dreams he might*? His fine and 
final triumph may not be wholly credible. But 
who will find it in his heart to quarrel with an 
invention so poetical, so exquisite and so human *? 
Roxane, the lady of Cyrano's heart, is in love 
with a fair-faced fool. Cyrano writes the boy's 
letters for him, speaks his adoring words, infuses 
his whole soul into the empty Gascon. And when 
the years have gone Roxane discovers whose soul 
she really loved and whose loss she really 
mourned. Nor, in estimating the convincingness 
of the play's incidents must it be forgotten that 
Rostand has delineated his milieu — the Paris of 
Moliere — with the breadth and scrupulousness of 
a naturalist. It is in this framework that the 
deeds and even the last triumph of Cyrano assume 
their satisfying verisimilitude. That triumph is 
his only one. He is not even happy in the de- 
sired occasion of his death. 

"Speaking some day, beneath a sunset sky, 
A happy word for some fair cause, I'd die V 



THE NEO-ROMANTIC DRAMA 241 

Such had been his wish and he falls victim to a 
vulgar and humiliating accident. But the man's 
indomitable spirit and his valorous humour rise 
above the wretchedness of his end. 

"Mine ancient enemies I recognise: 

Lying and Cowardice and Compromise — 

The hosts of Prejudice! / palter now? 

In death nor life ! There, Folly, too art thou ! 

I know it well, thou'lt hurl me into night ! 

It matters not ! I fight ! I fight ! I fight ! 

Thou hast robbed me of the laurel and the rose ; 

Take them ! Despite thee at this bitter close 

I carry to the Heavenly Courts to-night, 

Where my salute shall sweep those thresholds bright, 

One thing, despite thee, stainless of my doom, 

Erect, unspotted, foldless ! — 'Tis my plume !" 

The play may not have the full lyric charm, the 
singing quality of La Princesse lointaine; the elo- 
quence may have hardened a little. It is never- 
theless full of most admirable details: Cyrano's 
tirade on noses, on poetic independence, on the 
piper of his native land, his duelling ballade and 
his ballade on the cadets of Gascony. Every- 
where the medium thrills with life and with su- 
perb audacity. The art, doubtless, is never of the 
highest. Beside the sombre spiritual elevation 
of Hauptmann's Henry of Aue a shadow as of 



242 THE MODERN DRAMA 

breathing may seem to fall on its burnished sur- 
face. But of its kind it is infinitely beautiful and 
engaging. 

I must omit any detailed consideration of the 
powerful and pathetic play L'Aiglon (1900). It 
added no new element to Rostand's art. For ten 
years the poet was silent and then produced the 
widely heralded Chantecler. It is, as every one 
knows, an apologue in which Rostand has used 
the very ancient device of a world of speak- 
ing and reasoning animals. This method he 
has carried out with very sharp concreteness 
and with a very felicitous blending, in the 
various beasts, of the human, allegorical and 
animal notes. The golden pheasant does not 
cease to be a pheasant because she is an uncom- 
monly womanly woman, or the blackbird to be a 
blackbird because he is an extreme modern and 
a cynic; Patou, the dog, is a dog and an old 
idealist to boot. Chantecler, above all, is most 
excellently cock-like, although he is a poet, a phi- 
losopher and a lover. The two scenes, further- 
more, of the farmyard and the forest — so charm- 
ingly described in the sonnets that serve as stage- 
directions — are filled with a multiform and 
breathing life that convinces the imagination most 
happily. The central incident of the play is as 



THE NEO-ROMANTIC DRAMA 243 

well-known as its general plan. Chantecler be- 
lieves that his crowing causes the sun to rise. 
The golden pheasant lures him into the forest 
where the singing of the nightingales makes him 
forget to crow. The sun rises and his tragic dis- 
illusion overtakes him. But the cock is neither 
a coward nor a shirker. 

"Faith that so deeply in the soul has lain, 
Still seeks its habitation, even slain." 

Nor is he left without a mission; he may still 
cheer his fellows. 

"For in grey mornings when poor beasts awake, 
Not daring to believe that night is done, 
My metal clarion will replace the sun." 

The pheasant urges him to forget his disillusion. 
His answer comes without hesitation: 

"Nay, I ween 
I'll never forget that noble forest green, 
Wherein I learned that he whose dream has died 
Must perish or arise in nobler pride." 

It is not necessary to press the meaning of the 
fable too closely. Chantecler is a poet who loses 
faith in his ideal activity and turns to practical 
helpfulness. Or else man, having lost faith in 
himself as the centre of the universe and creating 



244 THE MODERN DRAMA 

a hardier faith by which to live. That these, as 
well as several other interpretations, are possible 
demonstrates the rich and valid humanity hidden 
in this play of beasts. Its liberal and fine moral 
flavour is best perceived when any definite inter- 
pretation is avoided. 

The poetic and imaginative texture of Chante- 
cler is the richest if not the sweetest that even 
Rostand has achieved. The medium is marvel- 
lously flexible and alive in every fibre. There is 
no otiose syllable, no forced rhyme, no awkward 
rhythm in all this shining and resounding river of 
verse. Chantecler's Ode to the Sun, the villa- 
nelle of the nightingales, above all, the lovely 
prayer of the birds in the fourth act, belong to 
the triumphs of French poetry and French versifi- 
cation. Perhaps the' most brilliant piece of po- 
etic eloquence in the play is Chantecler's confes- 
sion of his faith in his crowing: 

"The cry that takes from earth its upward flight 
It is a cry of passion for the light ; 
It is the shivering cry of love's dismay 
For that most golden thing we call the day. 
This all would see: the pine upon its bark, 
The paths now pathless in their mosses dark; 
The grain would see a flash on delicate blade, 
The smallest flint its facets fiery made. 
Oh, 'tis the eager cry of all that yearn 



THE NEOROMANTIC DRAMA 245 

To have their colour, brightness, flame return; 

It is the suppliant cry the meadow cries 

For rainbows in its myriad dewy eyes ; 

'Tis the sonorous prayer by forests made 

For fires of dawn in their obscurest glade; 

The cry which to the azure soars through me, 

'Tis the great cry of all things that would be 

Saved from the abyss of darkness and disgrace, 

Now punished by the sungod's hidden face; 

The cry of sleepless fear, of cold, of blight, 

Of all disarmed and driven by the night — 

Of the rose trembling in the dark alone, 

Of the grain drying for the miller's stone, 

Of ploughs forgotten by the reaper's care 

Eager to cleave the sod ; of things most fair 

That have aweary of their dullness grown, 

The cry of guileless beasts happy to own 

Their innocent deeds in the broad face of day, 

Of streams desiring the all-piercing ray. 

Thy works disown thee, Night! The pools desire 

To glitter gorgeously, the very mire 

Dreams of the earth 'twill be in the sun's heat. 

It is the field's magnificent cry for wheat 

To pierce its bosom through the glowing hours, 

It is the flowering tree's cry for new flowers, 

It is the grape's cry for a russet cheek, 

The bridge's cry for some brave foot to seek 

Its path upon whose trembling planks are stirred 

Shadows of trees, hiding the shadowy bird; 

The cry of all that would be singing, lose 

Its grief and live again and be of use ; 

Of the dumb stone glad in its warmth to lie 



246 THE MODERN DRAMA 

For hands to seek, or ants to scurry by ; 
It is the cry toward light of all the wealth 
Of all earth's Beauty and of all its Health; 
Of all that would, in sunshine and in joy, 
Follow, erect and clear-eyed, their employ; 
And when in me this vast appeal to day 
Rises, my soul grows larger that it may, 
Being more spacious, utter that great cry 
Greatlier still and more sonorously. 
Yet, ere it sounds, one moment I control 
Piously that vast clarion in my soul : 
But when at last it soars at nature's need 
I am convinced of a supernal deed : 
My faith proclaims — I shatter with my crow 
Night's ramparts like the walls of Jericho !" 

These verses do not, even in my bald transla- 
tion, quite lose their admirable and stintless elo- 
quence. It is not, assuredly, the highest poetry. 
A line of Milton or of Wordsworth makes the 
verse of Rostand seem somewhat hard, glaring and 
earthly. One need but think of 

"More safe I sing with mortal voice unchanged 
To hoarse or mute . . ." 

or of 

"Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns . . ." 

to feel that. But this is true of all the Titans, 
rather than the gods of song — of Dryden, Cor- 



THE NEO-ROMANTIC DRAMA 247 

neille, Schiller. But of these masters of poetic 
eloquence, an eloquence touched, in his case, by- 
many breathings of an exquisite modern lyricism, 
M. Rostand is the legitimate successor. 

IV 

Germany, the land in which the naturalistic 
drama reached its highest development, also bade 
the most eager welcome to the new awakening of 
romance. Many influences and streams of tend- 
ency helped to bring this about. The altruistic 
ethics basic to naturalism were replaced in many 
minds by the stern qualitative morality of 
Nietzsche. Readers of Also sprach Zarathustra 
felt, in addition, the impact of one of the great 
masters of plastic human speech whose influence 
upon the style of modern German prose and verse 
cannot be overestimated. There was besides, in 
the literature of the mid-century, a tradition of 
somewhat coldly finished imaginative work rep- 
resented by such potent names as Paul Heyse and 
Adolf Wilbrandt. And this tradition gave the 
decisive impulse to at least one neo-romanticist, 
Ludwig Fulda (b. 1862). Most powerful, how- 
ever, was the example of foreign masters. In the 
ideals of the youngest generation Zola and Tol- 
stoi, Ibsen and Dostoieffsky, yielded to Baudelaire 



248 THE MODERN DRAMA 

and Verlaine, Maeterlinck and Swinburne, D'An- 
nunzio and Oscar Wilde. And thus once more 
periodicals * and coteries heralded a literary revo- 
lution. 

Naturalism has outlasted that revolution. 
It will outlast many more. For a time, how- 
ever, neo-romantic plays commanded not only 
the market but the stage. The success of Fulda's 
Talisman (1892) was so resounding, the refresh- 
ment felt in the presence of good verse and grace- 
ful imagery was so sincere, that the German 
drama became, for a space, a gorgeous and glow- 
ing spectacle in which faery land and never-never 
land, classic and oriental antiquity and, above all, 
the Italian Renaissance blended in a bewildering 
array of forms. Yet all these plays owned the 
inheritance and the invaluable discipline of nat- 
uralism in the logical firmness of their structure 
and in their sound and subtle psychology. It was 
naturalism that lent them all the qualities by 
which they differ, upon the whole, so advanta- 
geously from the productions of an earlier genera- 
tion of romantic dramatists. 

Temporarily, at least, the neo-romantic move- 
ment could claim almost every German playwright 

iPaw, 1895-1899; Die Insel, 1899-1902; Blatter fur die 
Kunst, 1892-1898. 



THE NEO-ROMANTIC DRAMA 249 

of note. Sudermann wrote his Johannes (1898) 
and Die drei Reiherfedern (1898) ; Schnitzler his 
delightful Paracelsus (1892) and his elaborate 
Der S Meier der Beatrice (1899); even the con- 
sistent naturalists Halbe {Die Insel der Seligen, 
1905) and Hirschfeld (Der Weg zum Licht, 
1902) yielded to the enchantment of the imagina- 
tion. Nor did the movement fail to produce iso- 
lated works of not inconsiderable power and 
charm, such as Frau Bernstein's Konigskinder 
(1895) and Otto Julius Bierbaum's Gugeline 
(1899). The rank and file of the neo-romantic 
drama, however, will prove ephemeral. Its 
music will grow thin and its brightness tarnish. 
I am sorry to be forced to echo the consensus of 
German criticism to this effect even upon the 
work of that tireless and earnest spirit, Ludwig 
Fulda. He has been able to identify himself im- 
aginatively neither with faery land nor with the 
East, neither with antiquity nor the Renaissance 
nor the realm of Arthurian legend. The bright 
and musical verses glide past, the clever ideas hold 
the mind for a moment: neither the imagination 
nor the soul has been touched. The permanent 
German contribution to the neo-romantic drama 
is to be found in the work of Hauptmann and 
Hugo von Hofmannsthal. 



250 THE MODERN DRAMA 

What distinguishes Hauptmann from all other 
contemporary playwrights on the Continent is not 
only his austere power as an artist, but his pro- 
foundly religious nature. He is not committed 
to any dogma nor the Pharisaism of any moral 
convention. But he lives not only in the world; 
he lives in the universe. Like Goethe, like the 
great poets of England, he is aware, above all, 
of the three or four eternal problems that exercise 
the spirit of man. From his most uncompromis- 
ingly naturalistic plays — from The Weavers, 
Drayman Hensckel, Michael Kramer, Rose 
Bernd — there rises that heavenward yearning of 
which he has spoken, the struggling cry of men, 
even though broken by despair, for some reconcil- 
iation with the universe in which they live. To 
such a nature the impulse necessarily came to 
grasp a number of human problems synthetically, 
and to express his innermost self with that direct- 
ness which only poetry permits. 

His first departure from naturalism was partial 
and tentative. In Hannele (1893) the earthly 
environment is contemporary and crass in the ex- 
treme. But the significance of the fable lies in 
the fact that even from such an environment the 
heavenly yearning may ascend. Hannele Mat- 
tern is the child of outcasts; she dies a wretched 



THE NEO-ROMANTIC DRAMA 251 

death in the poorhouse. But the neo-romantic 
passages of the play are the crystallisation of the 
visions, the dreams, the ecstasies of that pure and 
pious imagination. In the feverish longings of 
her tormented adolescence she loves her teacher; 
in the visions of her faltering mind she blends his 
figure with the Saviour's. And still her dreams 
are shot with natural, childish longings for the 
visible splendour of her faery princesses. The 
psychology is as exact as the poetry is lovely- 
full of a tremor of mystical sweetness that vi- 
brates especially in the closing chorus of the an- 
gelic messengers: 

"A solemn greeting we bring thee 

Borne far through the darkness of space; 

Upon the edge of our pinions 
A breath of the heavenly grace. 

A wafture prophetic of Springtime 

From the hem of our garments is shed, 

On our lips that salute thee with singing, 
The blossom of dawn is red. 

O mystical green of our homeland! 

Our feet with its radiance are shod ; 
In the deeps of our eyes there shimmer 

The spires of the City of God." 

The Sunken Bell (1906), though raised by its 



252 THE MODERN DRAMA 

form and method into the realm of the timeless, is 
the drama of the creative thinker of our age. 
The problem of the modern artist is — as Haupt- 
mann has shown in Lonely Lives and again, quite 
recently, in Gabriel Schilling's Flight — the con- 
flict between personal and ideal ends. However 
blended with other motifs, the kernel of the play 
is there. The faith by which Heinrich, the bell- 
founder, lives is a faith in the presence of the 
creative power in his soul. 

"What's germed within me's worthy of the blessing — 
Worthy the ripening." 

His one aim is to see that germ ripen regardless 
of the world and its rewards, regardless of his 
personal happiness. To understand the play, it 
is necessary to lay hold upon the deep reality and 
sincerity of that thought. Into the soul of the 
true artist all forms and features of life bring 
only an added pang if its central purpose is unreal- 
ised. And it is this truth which the homely en- 
vironment of Heinrich's personal life does not 
know. His bell falls into the mere. And 
Magda, his wife, exclaims: 

'Tray Heaven that be the worst ! 
What matter one bell more or less, if he 
The master be but safe." 



THE NEO-ROMANTIC DRAMA 253 

The master is indeed alive though full of despair 
because the bell, as he alone knows, was lost by 
no mere chance. 

" 'Twas for the valley, not the mountain-top !" 

And to this cry of the artist's despair his wife 
replies : 

"That is not true! Hadst thou but heard as I 
The Vicar tell the Clerk in tones that shook, 
How gloriously 'twill sound upon the heights." 

The opinion of the vicar and the clerk are her 
norm. Of the unapproached ideal she knows 
nothing. Thus Heinrich, driven by what is 
deepest in him, goes up into the hills and finds 
a spirit of beauty and refreshment, Rautendelein ; 
he finds the pagan, pre-Christian world of nature. 
Here he will bring his treasures to light. There 
is no hardness of heart in his abandonment of his 
home. He cannot help Magda, for to her his 
wine would be "but bitter gall and venom." He 
stays upon the heights with Rautendelein; all 
nature aids him to build the temple of his dreams. 
The ignorant cries of hide-bound men only con- 
vince him more 

"Of the great weight and purpose of his mission." 

And yet he fails. It is the tragedy of the creative 



254 THE MODERN DRAMA 

soul. Too great a part of himself is merely hu- 
man and clings to the homely realities and affec- 
tions of his merely human life. 

"Yonder I am at home . . . and yet a stranger — 
Here am I strange . . . and yet I am at home." 

His children bring their mother's tears up the 
mountainside and the sunken bell, stirred by her 
dead hands, tolls the destruction of his hopes. 
Yet he dies clasping his creative vision to his 
heart. For it is better to die so than to return to 
the "service of the valleys" where the ideal is an 
outcast and a stranger. 

In Henry of Aue (1903), the second culminat- 
ing point of Hauptmann's neo-romantic drama, 
he has dealt, through the medium of a legend 
known in German literature for nearly a thousand 
3'ears, with the problem of natural evil. The 
legend tells of a great knight and lord who was 
smitten with leprosy and whom, according to the 
mediaeval belief, a pure maiden desired to heal 
through the shedding of her blood. But God, 
before the sacrifice could be consummated, 
cleansed the knight's body and permitted to him 
and the maiden a united temporal happiness. 
The framework of this story Hauptmann takes 
as he finds it. But the characters are made to 



THE NEO-ROMANTIC DRAMA 255 

live with a new life. The stark mediaeval con- 
ventions are broken and the old legend becomes 
living truth. The maiden is changed from an 
infant saint fleeing a vale of tears into a girl in 
whom the first, sweet passions of life blend into 
an exaltation half sexual and half religious, but 
pure with the purity of a great flame. The mira- 
cle, too, remains, but it is the miracle of love that 
subdues the despairing heart, that reconciles man 
to his universe and that slays the imperiousness of 
self. For it is when Henry's mad defiance is 
broken, when he has ceased to blaspheme a uni- 
verse where such things can be; it is when he be- 
lieves in a divine mercy which his faith can help 
to create — it is then that the symbolical miracle 
takes place. Like Job he cries out upon God for 
the evil that has come upon him; unlike Job he 
does not bow at last to a resistless power, but to 
a loving kindness at the core of things. 

"O Hartmann, like a soulless husk of flesh, 

An evil wizard's creature of dead clay, 

And not God's child — fashioned of stone or brass — 

This art thou till the pure ethereal stream 

Of divine love has poured its living fire 

Into the hull mysterious that hides 

The miracle of being from our ken. 

Then art thou thrilled with life ! Unfettered, free, 

The immortal light fulfills the mortal heart, 



256 THE MODERN DRAMA 

Radiantly breaking through thy prison's walls, 
Redeeming, melting thee and all thy world 
In the eternal universe of love." 

The workmanship of Henry of Aue is probably 
the noblest in the neo-romantic drama. Haupt- 
mann has not, in his verse, the brilliant eloquence 
of Rostand, nor the eerie sweetness of Yeats, nor 
the brocaded pomp of Hofmannsthal. His are 
a sombre glow, an austere spiritual passion, ca- 
dences that satisfy an ear accustomed to the blank- 
verse of the English masters. To such qualities 
no translation can do full justice. Yet the con- 
trast will gain somewhat in clearness by compar- 
ing my tentative version of the confession of 
Chantecler with this rendering of the final lines in 
the vision of Ottegebe. 

"Then, silent, in that dim mysterious hour, 

Rising from Southward and from Northward, poured 

As from a fountain, a radiant light and clear, 

And from that light in one strange minute rose 

Slowly two silent, alien suns that moved 

Gradually higher, farther, and higher still, 

Till in the zenith they became as one. 

Now a great purity fell over all — 

In me, about me, upon heaven and earth ; 

And from those constellations o'er my head 

The sweet, immortal Saviour issued forth. 

And a vast music sounded as of Choirs 



THE NEO-ROMANTIC DRAMA 257 

Numberless, and the song came: Sursum cordaf 
Gloria in excelsis Deo I and last 
A great and goodly voice sounded and sang : 
Amen ! For thy beseeching hath been heard, 
And broken is the burden of his doom !" 

It is not necessary to consider in detail the other 
neo-romantic plays of Hauptmann. Continuous 
perfection of workmanship, unfailing steadiness 
of inspiration are not notes of the Germanic gen- 
ius. Neither And Pippa Dances (1906) nor 
Charlemagne's Hostage (1909), neither Griselda 
(1910) nor The Bow of Odysseus (1914), rises 
to the level of The Sunken Bell or Henry of Aue. 
Yet German criticism has been singularly ungrate- 
ful for these later pieces. To compare them to 
the works of lesser men is to recognise at once 
their elements of high and permanent beauty. 
Nor, in such a world as this, do we despise Cym- 
beline because it is not Lear> nor Georges Dandin 
because it is not Le Misanthrope. Gerhart 
Hauptmann is stricken by the shattering doubts, 
the searching perplexities, the vast driftings of 
modern life. But, such as he is, we must acknowl- 
edge him as surely the representative dramatist 
of our time as Shakespeare and Moliere were of 
theirs. 

Hugo von Hofmannsthal was born late enough 



258 THE MODERN DRAMA 

(1874) t0 escape that ardent revolution which 
made naturalism supreme in German letters. 
Keats, D'Annunzio and Swinburne were his mas- 
ters, no less than the French symbolists and his 
Austrian fellow countryman, the eminent lyrist, 
Stephan George. He has himself set forth his 
method and his ideal in a prose as chiselled and as 
perfectly wrought as his verse. His criticism of 
naturalism is reasoned out very clearly. "These 
poets submerge themselves constantly in the ele- 
ments of their age and seem never to rise above 
those elements. Their eternal surrender to their 
substance (and it matters so little whether that 
substance be of the outer world or the world of 
the soul) expresses something like a renunciation 
of all synthesis, a withdrawal of themselves, an 
unworthy and incomprehensible resignation." 
And the special power of creative artists seems 
to Hofmannsthal to rest in this, that "by virtue 
of the deep passion which impels them they can 
assign to each new thing its place in that orderly 
vision of the whole which they bear within; by 
virtue of that untamable passion they can bring 
all things into relation with each other." Hence 
he calls "a synthesis of the contents of his age" 
the indispensable achievement of the poet. And 
men seem to him to be athirst for such a synthesis. 




THE NEO-ROMANTIC DRAMA 259 

They seek in books what once they sought before 
fragrant altars, in the twilight of cathedrals which 
their yearning had taught to soar. They seek 
what is to unite them more powerfully than aught 
else with the world and at the same time take 
from them the world's heaviness. They seek a 
self, leaning upon which, their own selves may 
grow less disquieted. In a word, they seek all the 
enchantment of poetry. . . . For they would not 
stand shivering in their nakedness under the stars." 
I quote these sayings at some length because 
they present the whole real case against the pre- 
dominance of naturalistic art. The tragic reply 
to Hofmannsthal's arraignment is this : The poet 
cannot give a synthesis of any portion of the gen- 
eral life of man except under the sway of some con- 
trolling vision of the totality of things — a vision 
that is either clearly seen by the eye of reason or 
unfalteringly beheld by the eye of faith. Thus 
only can he "synthesise the contents of his age." 
But how is the modern poet to attain to such a vi- 
sion for which we ask the priest, the scientist, the 
philosopher in vain? For the universe has grown 
vast and wild and untamable and we cannot snare 
it with the old merciful dreams! Thus the fate 
of the dramatic poet who divorces himself from 
concrete reality and aims at a synthetic dealing 



260 THE MODERN DRAMA 

with life will, usually, be either one of two things : 
He will either be subjective and unconsciously- 
lyrical in the drama, or he will take refuge in an 
archaic vision of the world. And such has been 
the twofold fate of Hofmannsthal himself. In 
his symbolistic plays there is but one protagonist 
—himself, surrounded by the shadows of his pro- 
jected moods. In the more sombre masterpieces 
of his maturity, in Elektra (1903) and Odipus 
und die Sphinx ( 1906), he has taken refuge in an 
Hellenic vision of life which has its grandeur and 
its imperishable artistic and cultural validity, but 
which will never again help any soul to "hide its 
nakedness under the stars." 

Hofmannsthal' s fame was securely established 
by a series of symbolical dramas in one act and 
in verse written between 1891 and 1899. Struc- 
turally these plays can hardly be said to be dra- 
matic at all. There is no interplay of forces; the 
crises are purely subjective. The characters 
speak past each other into the void. Nor need 
one, I think, be ashamed to confess that the mean- 
ing of several of these plays — Der Kaiser und die 
Hexe (1897) or Das Bergwerk zu Falun (1899) 
— quite escapes the closest attention and the com- 
pletest passivity to the poet's method. Rut what 
distinguishes all these plays is their form. The 



THE NEO-ROMANTIC DRAMA 261 

verses are like magnificent robes sweeping through 
corridors of porphyry and alabaster; in every fold 
are arduous fulness of dignity and grace. There 
is very little passion and no violence at all; there 
is the perfection of studied and learned beauty. 
But, indeed, all figures halt. For Hofmanns- 
thal's contribution to literature is, closely con- 
sidered, unique. We find in him a classical ful- 
ness of self-contained formal perfection embody- 
ing the dreams and marvels of the symbolist. 
The chiselled cup is not filled with a Falernian or 
a Massic vintage, but with the magic potions of 
romance. To that form, in itself, Hofmannsthal 
attributes the highest significance. "The artif- 
icer's form," to use his own words — although I 
translate this scrupulous and difficult poet with 
reluctance — 

"The artificer's form 
Of words that are drenched in water and in light, 
Wherein I subtly weave reflected glow 
Of these adventures in such ways that far 
Blond boys dwelling in cities dark and hearing 
Thereof, exchange in silence heavy glances, 
And under burden of an undreamed-of fate 
Waver like over-laden vines and whisper: 
'Oh that I knew more of these deeds and dreams, 
For in some wise I am woven into them, 
And cannot tell where dream and life divide V " 



262 THE MODERN DRAMA 

The boy Hofmannsthal (for since he wrote 
Gestern in 1891, he sets a new standard of pre- 
cocity in the annals of literature) had quite evi- 
dently fallen under the influence of the English 
aesthetic movement. The ideal of Andrea, the 
protagonist of Gestern, could be perfectly ex- 
pressed by the familiar lines of Wilde: 

"To drift with every passion till my soul 

Is a stringed lute on which all winds may play." 

But already the young poet has premonitions of 
a maturer wisdom. For Andrea finds that the 
snare of yesterday is upon him and that man can- 
not live in the isolated moods of his moments with 
however "hard and gemlike a flame" they may 
burn. 

Hofmannsthal breaks definitely with sestheti- 
cism in his most famous one act play Der Tor und 
der Tod ( 1893). This play has been truly called 
a modern Faust in miniature. Claudio is the 
modern slave of aesthetic culture; he has lived 
entirely through the visions of art and has re- 
jected reality. Love and friendship have been 
to him but as pictures. He has grasped what 
seemed most precious and finds his hands and his 
soul empty at the last. Death reveals to him the 



THE NEO-ROMANTIC DRAMA 263 

sacred experiences that he has missed, the fulness 
of life that has passed him by. 

Never have Hofmannsthal's verses been more 
faultless or his music more enchanting than in 
these very early plays. He indulges himself here 
in the luxury of rhyme denied to some of his later 
plays which seek the form and meaning of beauty 
in the Orient (Die Hochzeit der Sobeide, 1899), 
in islands of the tropic sea (Der weisse Facher^ 
1897), or by the shores of the Northern ocean 
(Das Bergwerk zu Falun, 1899). 

Did the poet feel that his symbolism, toward 
1900, was approaching an extreme tenuousness? 
At that period, at all events, a profound change 
came over the spirit of his work. He now set 
himself the task of re-creating — not of translating, 
despite his large use of existing form and sub- 
stance — the older masterpieces of literature. His 
reinterpretation of Otway's Venice Preserved 
(Das gerettete Venedig, 1905) can scarcely be 
said to surpass the definite but moderate merit of 
the original. In his two masterpieces Elektra and 
Odipus und die Sphinx he has employed a far 
higher order of imaginative power. 

Hofmannsthal invites no comparison with the 
great Attic dramatists. His aim is different. It 



264 THE MODERN DRAMA 

is to get behind those dramatists to the wild hu- 
man origins of the myths with which they deal, 
to the fierce and primitive and noble folk that 
must have antedated the Greece of immortal mar- 
bles and Sophoclean choruses. And that imagi- 
native vision he has reconstructively grasped with 
an energy and tenacity that no one would have 
suspected from the heavy fragrance of his earlier 
work. The verse in these Greek plays is sinewy, 
bare, expressive, the mood stern yet impassioned, 
the dramatic rhythm sweeps along like the storms 
that hover over the dark forests and mysterious 
shrines of that pre-classical Hellenic world. 
What Hofmannsthal has most powerfully laid 
hold upon is the idea of fate, not as a literary con- 
vention, but as the immediate spiritual experience 
of an entire world. We shake with Clytemnestra 
under the shadow of her ineluctable doom; we 
flee with Odipus from the oracle's certain predic- 
tion; we cower in the courtyard with Elektra 
under the terror of that fated revenge. The 
modern poetic drama has little to show that sur- 
passes these figures and these situations in a 
strange gloom and massiveness of imaginative 
power. I venture, with a sense of its extreme in- 
adequacy, to quote my rendering of a portion of 
the farewell of Odipus to his father and mother. 



THE NEO-ROMANTIC DRAMA 265 

The cadences are quite new in any language; in 
the original they have a repressed, grief-stricken 
hardness of music. 

"Tell my father and tell my mother that once on each 

day 
At this hour when the earth shakes with fear through 

all her ways, 
Because night the heavy darkness on her lays, 
They shall recall to their heart that their son still breathes 

the air, 
Then will I kneel me adown somewhere, 
And, when the hands of the nightwind in forests stir, 
Like human breathing, heavy, oppressed, 
Come visions of them to my breast. 
And sometimes, though it be not each day, 
A presage will come to them straight from the nightwind 

wild, 
Which will be stirring and gently whirring by the 

window where they sleep ; 
Then are they to know that it is their child." 

It is quite impossible, of course, to sum up the 
genius or the achievement of Hofmannsthal. 
The poet is in his fortieth year and the recent de- 
velopment in his work justifies almost any hope 
for his future. 



To England the naturalistic movement came 
last of all. Even now, despite the great work of 



266 THE MODERN DRAMA 

John Galsworthy, it has but a precarious foothold 
there. Thus the time for an English neo-roman- 
ticism has hardly come. Plays in verse are writ- 
ten, for the old closet-drama still sustains a fitful, 
and sequestered life. And, fifteen years ago, even 
good critics like Sir Sidney Colvin hailed in 
Stephen Phillips (b. 1868) the inaugurator of a 
new age of dramatic poetry. Doubtless there 
were very beautiful passages in the early plays of 
Mr. Phillips, in Paolo and Francesca (1899), in 
Herod (1900), even in Ulysses (1902). But the 
manner and tone of even these was derivative. 
The plays themselves were sustained by no native 
and vital energy. They were conventional, built 
for scenic display, empty of ideas, without depth 
or hardihood of character. They were the works 
of a poet, indeed, but of a poet whose method 
and style were old enough to be old-fashioned, not 
old enough to be ancient, and therefore strangely 
new and splendid. They look withered enough 
now just as, in another fifteen years, will look 
the Tennysonian exercitations of Mr. Alfred 
Noyes. 

In those days there will come into his kingdom, 
late and world-worn, the most gifted and original 
English poet of his generation, the creator of a 
new blank verse and of a new lyrical music. At 



THE NEO-ROMANTIC DRAMA 267 

the time of his tragic failure in health Arthur 
Symons (b. 1865) was working at two plays in 
verse, a Tristran and Iseult and a tragedy of 
Cornish peasant life, The Harvesters. But these 
masterpieces of the English neo-romantic drama 
are lost. Two dramatic fragments Faustus and 
Helen and Otho and Poppaa alone are left us, 
and those priceless moralities The Dance of the 
Seven Sins, The Lover of the Queen of Sheba and 
The Fool of the World. These have the tensely 
quiet, the timeless music of rhythm and thought 
and passion that all of Symons' work has. They 
do not belong, strictly speaking, to the history 
of the drama at all. 

No, the English neo-romantic drama has not 
come from England; it has come from Ireland and 
its chief representatives are, I take it, Mr. Yeats, 
(b. 1865), Lady Gregory and the late John Mil- 
lington Synge. 

So much has recently been written of the Irish 
movement by people who understand it well, that 
I shall let my own account of it be quite brief. 
And I am the more impelled to such brevity by the 
suspicion that I look upon these Irish plays with 
the eyes of a stranger who, though most eager to 
understand and to sympathise with the latest pro- 
ductions of a brave and charming race, feels his 



268 THE MODERN DRAMA 

eyes dimmed by these infinite patterns in faintest 
green and grey and silver, and his ears dulled by 
the endless and endlessly subdued murmur of 
these 

"Old, unhappy, far-off things 
And battles long ago." 

My vision is at the breaking point for a note of 
colour, my hearing for a tone of passion. In 
vain. When her beloved dies without a glance 
for her and Grania turns to Finn in the wild bit- 
terness of her grief, her speech remains like an 
exquisite decorative pattern in style. And in- 
deed I think it is meant to be so from two passages 
I find in Mr. Yeats' Ideas of Good and Evil. "I 
would like to see a poetical drama which tries to 
keep at a distance from daily life that it may keep 
its emotion untroubled, staged with but two or 
three colours." And further on in the same re- 
markable book he confesses his conviction that 
"the hour of convention and decoration and cere- 
mony is coming again." Reading these sentences 
and thinking of Mr. Yeats' The Shadowy Waters 
(1900) or Lady Gregory's Dervorgilla (1907), 
I see that this art intentionally approaches a dec- 
oration and a ceremony, in the mystical and relig- 
ious sense, and thus deliberately, from my point 



THE NEO-ROMANTIC DRAMA 269 

of view, renounces the vitality and meaningful- 
ness reserved for art that grows from the imme- 
diate experience of the impassioned soul. I can 
understand a drama that would "keep at a dis- 
tance from daily life;" but a drama that would 
thereby "keep its emotion untroubled," that is to 
say the emotion (if I understand rightly) it is 
trying to express, is frankly lyrical or decorative 
and not dramatic at all. 

Behind these theories of art there hovers, of 
course, a vision of the world. When Mr. Yeats 
writes, 

"How shall I name you, immortal, mild, proud shadows ? 
I only know that all we know comes from you, 
And that you come from Eden on flying feet," 

I am aware of that joy which is the perception of 
beauty. For this verse is like the swaying of road- 
side grasses and there is a faint, wild, inimitable 
pathos in its uncertain cadences. But, unless I 
stupidly misunderstand, Mr. Yeats expresses here 
what is to him not a sentiment but a conviction. 
He really believes that the legends of Celtic an- 
tiquity contain a mystic truth which is the key to 
the door of the world's secrets. In other words 
his art is based upon a vision of things which is 
not only unreal but, if one must be frank, puerile. 
In addition, there is in Mr. Yeats' work a kind 



270 THE MODERN DRAMA 

of wild logic, like the logic of mad people. That 
quality may be illustrated by the play in prose 
Where There Is Nothing ( 1903). At the opening 
of the play Paul Ruttledge is overtaken, like most 
of us in our more illuminated moments, by a sense 
of the utter triviality of practical things, of pos- 
sessions and conventions and laws. So he joins 
the tinkers and there is some very excellent de- 
scription of the roadside life. Interesting, too, 
and humorous is the trial of the Christians in the 
fourth act, though it is based upon an obviously 
unfair assumption. But Paul is unaccustomed to 
exposure and must leave the road to take refuge 
in a monastery. Here he develops his early re- 
bellion against a worldly and materialistic life 
into a heresy for which he and his adherents are 
driven out. And the apparently logical but quite 
mad conclusions to which he has come, are 
summed up thus : "We must destroy all that has 
law and number!" "Where there is nothing, 
there is God!" Now it is obvious that law, in 
the sense of natural law, and number, do not in- 
here in things at all, but are the human mind's 
really very mysterious way of dealing with things 
and subduing them into order and helpfulness. 
You cannot destroy law by destroying things, but 
only by destroying physicists; you cannot destroy 



THE NEO-ROMANTIC DRAMA 271 

number except by destroying mathematicians. In 
brief, Mr. Yeats not only believes like a child, he 
also reasons like a child. And that is bound to 
vitiate a work of art the main business of which 
is to reason about life and things. 

Mr. Yeats' plays in verse are always sustained 
as literature, if not as drama, by the enchanting 
beauty of their medium, by that "speech, de- 
lighted with its own music," though even here one 
often yearns for emphasis, concentration, density. 
Some of these plays, moreover, are no less exqui- 
site for their meaning than for their form. I am 
not thinking of The Countess Cathleen (1899) 
which carries but a commonplace moral in the end, 
but of The Land of Heart's Desire (1894) m 
which the old Pagan world of visible charm and 
brightness and beauty captures the Irish lass, and 
pre-eminently of that pregnant poem The King's 
Threshold (1903) with its fine protest against 
the least compromise on the supreme and eternal 
issues; with its great reply of the poet Seanchan 
to his beloved: 

"If I had eaten when you bid me, sweetheart, 
The kiss of multitudes in time to come 
Had been the poorer ;" 

and with its brave emphasis upon the arts which 
are the light of the world: 



272 THE MODERN DRAMA 

"Comparing them to venerable things 

God gave to men before he gave them wheat." 

In these plays Mr. Yeats has seen "the world as 
imagination sees it" and that, indeed, as he says, 
is "the durable world." But very often he and 
his fellow workers in the Irish movement have de- 
scribed a world which only their very special kind 
of imagination has seen at all, and it is then that 
their art seems fragile and evanescent and a little 
empty. 

In the plays of Lady Gregory the impression of 
merely decorative art is most marked. And the 
reason I take to be this: These plays are not 
symbolical. They are "folk and history" plays, 
and are supposed to move us by their humanity, 
by creatures of flesh and blood acting or suffering 
in some way. Rut they are removed into utter 
remoteness by an indescribable detachment of ac- 
tion and gesture and by the unvaried modulations 
in the prose of the dialogue. That monotony is 
not base or careless; it is carefully studied. But 
the effects of hundreds of pages of it on one mind 
at least are terrible. It hurts the eyes of the mind 
as unendurably as the eyes of the body would 
be hurt if you passed in front of them thousands 
of yards of Irish lace of the same pattern. The 



THE NEO-ROMANTIC DRAMA 273 

rawest melodrama is like balm after this exqui- 
sitely conscientious art. 

But has not the Irish movement, indeed, lost all 
vision of reality? The late J. M. Synge (1871- 
1909) for instance, in his preface to The Tinker's 
Wedding (1907) sharply condemns the modern 
"analysts and their problems," and contrasts with 
their work "the best plays of Ben Jonson and 
Moliere which can no more go out of fashion than 
the blackberries on the hedges." Now Moliere 
analysed all the problems of his time — pedantry 
and snobbishness and quackery and hypocrisy in 
religion and in manners and in intellectual things, 
just as the moderns analyse marriage and poverty 
and justice. And though the scholar can recon- 
struct an adumbration of the kind of pleasure that 
Ben Jonson's plays must once have given, they 
are, in the deep and emphatic sense of Synge, 
thoroughly out of fashion, and far more resemble 
half-obliterated paintings than blackberries. 

Thus it would be curious to inquire of unso- 
phisticated and sensible Irish people whether they 
accept The Tinker's Wedding and especially The 
Playboy of the Western World (1907) with its 
perfectly amazing central incident (all the more 
amazing and unnatural if it is meant to be funny) 



274 THE MODERN DRAMA 

as representative of the Irish life they know. It is 
not necessary to ask any such question concerning 
Riders to the Sea (1904). The play is a one- 
act tragedy, thoroughly naturalistic in structure 
and method, human in every fibre, ending upon a 
note of almost intolerable pathos in Maury a' s re- 
lief that the sea, having taken the last of her sons, 
can do her no more hurt. 

If this account of the Irish movement seems not 
only unduly brief, but hopelessly inadequate, I 
can only plead that its world is one to which — 
with such obvious and splendid exceptions as The 
King's Threshold and Riders to the Sea — no pre- 
vious experience of literature or life seems to give 
me an entrance or the power of being intellec- 
tually at home. In those rarefied regions of a sere 
and fluttering beauty I seem to hear the echo of 
that pathetic sentence quoted by Matthew Arnold 
in his lectures on The Study of Celtic Literature: 

"They went forth to battle, but they always 
fell. . . ." 

VI 

The success of the neo- romantic movement in 
modern literature has been in its revival of the 
poetic spirit and in its liberation of art from the 
dull fetters of positivistic conceptions. It differs 



THE NEO-ROMANTIC DRAMA 275 

from the romantic movement of the early nine- 
teenth century by the soundness of its psychology 
and the firmness of its structural forms. And 
these two qualities it owes to the great presence 
and discipline of naturalistic art. But it is these 
very qualities that helped it to overcome the mere 
lyricism of romance and lay hold upon the art of 
the theatre. No earlier romanticism ever suc- 
ceeded in doing that. For the drama, however 
poetical in form, is nothing without a solid and 
fundamental correspondence to the stuff of which 
human life is made. Such a correspondence, as 
well as poetry of notable greatness, is to be found 
in Henry of Aue, in Chantecler, in Elektra, in 
The King's Threshold. The romantic revolt of 
an earlier period has no drama that can be placed 
beside these works. 

The failure of the neo-romantic movement is 
due to the greatness of its ambitions. It has tried, 
in many instances, to give a synthetic interpreta- 
tion of its age, and it has not had — as I attempted 
to point out — any vision of the sum of things in 
the light of which to give that interpretation. Is 
that failure necessarily permanent *? I think not. 
We will never again, perhaps, in Western civilisa- 
tion, attain the spiritual assurance of the past. 
We cannot divest ourselves of that knowledge 



276 THE MODERN DRAMA 

which makes the ultimate problems of such heart- 
breaking difficulty and complexity. But sooner 
or later — not I am sure, in the direction of Prag- 
matism — but in the direction of such a ^interpre- 
tation of man's historic life and the real values of 
that life, as Eucken has offered, we may attain 
the goal of a calmer heart, a less distracted mind. 
It is then that the neo-romantic poet, assured of 
the permanence of a few values, will be able to 
synthesise the life of free personalities in a free 
world, and surpass our immediate contemporaries 
whose poetic activity has had to be, so largely, a 
reaction against false gods rather than the unfet- 
tered creation of new and fairer ones. 



STUDY LISTS 



STUDY LISTS 



THE REPRESENTATIVE WORKS OF THE 
MODERN DRAMA 

GROUP I 

(Illustrating the Foundations of the Modern Drama.) 

Ibsen: Ghosts — 1881. 
Ibsen: The Lady from the Sea — 1888. 
Strindberg: Comrades — 1888. 
Zola: Therese Raquin — 1873. 
Becque: Les Cor beaux — 1882. 

GROUP II 

(Illustrating the Realistic Drama in France.) 
Curel: Les Fossiles — 1892. 
Porto-Riche : A moureuse — 1 89 1 . 
Lavedan : Viveurs — 1895. 
Brieux: Le Berceau — 1898. 
Brieux: Les Hannetons — 1906. 
Hervieu: La Course du Flambeau — 1901. 
Hervieu : Connais-toi — 1 909. 
Lemaitre : Le Pardon — 1895. 
Donnay: Amants — 1895. 

GROUP III 

(Illustrating the Naturalistic Drama in Germany,) 
Hauptmann: The Weavers — 1892. 

279 



280 STUDY LISTS 

Hauptmann: Michael Kramer — 1900. 
Hauptmann: Rose Bernd — 1903. 
Sudermann : Die Schmetterlingsschlacht — 1895. 
Halbe : Jug end — 1893. 
Hirschfeld: Agnes Jordan — 1898. 
Hartleben: H anna Jag ert — 1893. 
Wedekind: Friihlings Erwachen — 1894. 
Schnitzler : Liebelei — 1894. 
Schnitzler: Der einsame Weg — 1903. 

GROUP IV 

(Illustrating the Renaissance of the English Drama.) 

Wilde: An Ideal Husband — 1895. 
Pinero: The Thunderbolt — 1910. 
Shaw: Candida — 1894. 
Shaw: Man and Superman — 1903. 
Galsworthy: Strife — 1909. 
Galsworthy: The Eldest Son — 1909. 
Barker: The Madras House — 1909. 

group v 

(Illustrating the Neo-Romantic Movement in the Modern 

Drama.) 

Maeterlinck: Les Aveugles — 1890. 
Maeterlinck: Interieur — 1890. 
Rostand: Cyrano de Bergerac — 1897. 
Rostand: Chantecler — 1910. 
Hauptmann: The Sunken Bell — 1896. 
Hauptmann: Henry of Au'e — 1903. 
Hofmannsthal : Der Tor und der Tod — 1893. 
Hofmannsthal : Odipus und die Sphinx — 1906. 
Yeats: The Land of Heart's Desire — 1894. 
Yeats: The King's Threshold — 1903. 



STUDY LISTS 281 

B 

THE SUBJECT MATTER OF THE MODERN 
DRAMA 

GROUP I 

Plays dealing with Poverty and Social Justice. 

Becque: Les Corbeaux 
Brieux: Blancheite 
Brieux: La Robe rouge 
Hauptmann: The Weavers 
Hauptmann: Rose Bernd 
Sudermann: Stein unter Steinen 
Schnitzler : Das Vermdchtnis 
Hartleben : Hanna Jagert 
Galsworthy: The Silver Box 
Galsworthy : Strife 
Galsworthy : Justice 
Galsworthy : The Pigeon 

GROUP 11 
Plays dealing with Marriage and Divorce. 

Ibsen : A Doll's House 
Strindberg : Comrades 
Strindberg : The Link 
Porto-Riche: Amour euse 
Brieux : Le Berceau 
Hervieu: Les Tenailles 
Hervieu : Le Loi de I'komme 
Hervieu: Le Dedale 
Hervieu: Le Reveil 
Hervieu : Connais-toi 



282 STUDY LISTS 

Lemaitre: Le Pardon 

Sudermann: Das Gluck im Winkel 

Halbe : Mutter Erde 

Hirschf eld : Zu Hause 

Hartleben : Die Erziehung zur Eke 

Pinero: The Second Mrs. Tanqueray 

Shaw: Getting Married 

Shaw : Candida 

Galsworthy: The Fugitive 

GROUP III 

Plays dealing with Sex. 
Ibsen : Ghosts 
Bjornson: A Gauntlet 

Brieux: The Three Daughters of Af. Dupont 
Brieux: La petite Amie 
Brieux: Damaged Goods 
Brieux : Maternity 
Donnay: V Autre Danger 
Hauptmann : Gabriel Schilling's Flight 
Halbe : Jugend 
Schnitzler: Anatol 
Schnitzler: Das Marc hen 
Schnitzler : Liebelei 
Wedekind: Fruhlings Erwachen 
Shaw: Man and Superman 
Barker : Waste 
Barker : The Madras House 

GROUP IV 

Plays Dealing with the Life of Ait. 
Hauptmann : The Sunken Bell 



STUDY LISTS 283 

Hauptmann: Michael Kramer 
Hirschfeld: Die Mutter 
Hirschfeld: Der junge Goldner 
Schnitzler : Liter atur 
Hofmannsthal : Der Tod des Tizian 
Yeats : The King's Threshold 

GROUP V 

Plays Dealing with the Life of Faith and of the Intellect. 

Ibsen : Rosmersholm 

Bjomson: Beyond Our Strength 

Brieux: La Foi 

Hauptmann: Henry of Aue 

Halbe: Das tausendjahrige Reich 

Maeterlinck: Les Aveugles 

Rostand : Chantecler 

Hofmannsthal : Der Tor und der Tod 

C 

THE UNITIES IN THE MODERN DRAMA 

GROUP I 

Plays Observing the Unity of Place 

Ibsen : The Pillars of Society 
Ibsen: Hedda G abler 
Zola: Therese Raquin 
Becque: La Parisienne 
De Maupassant: La Paix du Menage 
Curel : UEnvers d'une Sainte 
Curel : Le Coup d'Aile 
Porto-Riche: Amour euse 



284 STUDY LISTS 

Brieux: Blanchette 

Brieux: Le Berceau 

Brieux: Les Hannetons 

Hervieu : Connais-toi 

Lemaitre: Le Pardon 

Holz: Die Familie Selicke 

Schlaf : Meister Oelze 

Hauptmann : Lonely Lives 

Hauptmann : Drayman Hens eke I 

Sudermann : Heimat 

Sudermann : Johannisfeuer 

Halbe : Jugend 

Dreyer : Drei 

Dreyer : Winterschlaf 

Rosmer : Dammerung 

Schnitzler: Das Vermachtnis 

Schnitzler : Zwischenspiel 

Hartleben: Angele 

Jones : The Triumph of the Philistines 

Galsworthy: The Pigeon 

GROUP II 

Plays Observing the Unities of Time and Place. 

Ibsen : Ghosts 
Ibsen: A Doll's House 
Strindberg: The Father 
Strindberg : Comrades 
Strindberg : Miss Julia 
Strindberg : Creditors 
Strindberg: The Link 
Hervieu : VEnigme 
Hauptmann: The Reconciliation 



STUDY LISTS 285 

Halbe : Der Strom 
Shaw : Candida 

(Mr. Galsworthy's Strife observes the unity of time 
but not of place.) 



CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE 
MODERN DRAMA 



CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE 
MODERN DRAMA 

The following bibliography lays no claim to 
the barren virtue of mere completeness on the 
side of biography and criticism. Those works 
have been selected which seemed most excellent 
and authoritative. I have made every effort, on 
the other hand, to give in the order of their first 
appearance in any form the works of all the play- 
wrights discussed in the text and a full list of the 
existing English translations of foreign plays. 
Except in the case of Rostand, however, I have 
not held it necessary to give several versions of 
the same play. 

In so considerable an array of names and dates 
dealing with a contemporary subject, omissions 
and inaccuracies — the latter due sometimes to dis- 
agreement among my authorities — will necessarily 
be found. I shall be grateful to any student of 
the subject for corrections and additions. It is 
obvious that, except in the case of Chapter Three, 
no bibliographical notes could be given for the 

opening section on each chapter. Hence, in order 

289 



290 CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 

that the divisions of the bibliography may cor- 
respond to those in the text, the bibliographical 
material belonging to Chapters One, Two, Four 
and Five begins with Section II. 

It is a noteworthy fact that of the seven books 
dealing with the modern drama in its interna- 
tional aspect all but one — that of Ashley Dukes 
— are of American origin. The seven books are: 
Edward Everett Hale, Dramatists of To-day 
(1905), James Huneker, Iconoclasts: A Book 
of Dramatists (1905), Ashley Dukes, Modern 
Dramatists (1911), Archibald Henderson, Euro- 
pean Dramatists (1913), Barrett H. Clark, The 
Continental Drama of To-day (1914), Archibald 
Henderson, The Changing Drama (1914), 
Frank Wadleigh Chandler, Aspects of Modern 
Drama (1914). These books vary remarkably 
in quality and range. The important point for 
us, however, is that the volumes of Hale, Huneker 
and Dukes consist of desultory essays, studies and 
even notes. There is in them no attempt to grasp 
the subject as a whole or to give any reasoned ac- 
count of it. It is otherwise with Professor Hen- 
derson's The Changing Drama and Professor 
Chandler's Aspects of Modern Drama. But in 
these books, too, the method is not historical and 



CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 291 

the authors' accounts are given according to kinds 
and tendencies, or in Professor Chandler's words 
"dramatic kinds and moods," and not at all ac- 
cording to the men and their works in historical 
order, national groupings and against the back- 
ground of contemporary thought. Mr. Clark's 
volume is one of synopses and bibliographies. 
The latter, though not always accurate, are ex- 
tremely useful and I must acknowledge my in- 
debtedness to them for calling my attention to 
several English versions of foreign plays which 
I might else have overlooked. 

Note. — I have become much indebted, in the course of writ- 
ing this bibliography, to Miss Maud Jeffrey of the Ohio State 
University Library, and to the libraries of the Universities of 
Illinois, Chicago and Wisconsin. 



CHAPTER ONE 

THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE MODERN DRAMA 
II 

HENRIK IBSEN 

Criticism and Biography: From the enor- 
mous mass of Ibsen literature a rigid selection 
is all that need be given. The best brief biog- 
raphies are : H. Jaeger, Henrik Ibsen, A Crit- 
ical Biography (1890), and Edmund Gosse, 
Henrik Ibsen (1908); the fullest is U. C. 
Worner, Henrik Ibsen (2 vols. 1900). Of 
critical treatises may be mentioned the brilliant 
and sagacious study in Heinrich Bulthaupt's 
Dramaturgie des Schauspiels (vol. IV, ed. 
1901), B. Litzmann, Ibsen's Dramen (1900), 
Georg Brandes, Henrik Ibsen, — Bjornstjerne 
Bjornson (Eng. ed. 1899) an d G. B. Shaw, The 
Quintessence of Ibsenism (Rev. ed. 1913). 
Works: Catalina, 1850; The Warrior's 
Mound, 1854; Lady Inger of Ostrat, 1855; 
The Feast at Solhaug, 1856; Olaf Liljekrans, 
1857; The Vikings at Helgeland, 1861 ; Love's 
Comedy, 1862; The Pretenders, 1864; Brand, 
1866; Peer Gynt, 1867; The League of Youth, 
1869; Emperor and Galilean, 1873; Tne ^ il " 
292 



CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 293 

lars of Society, 1877; A Doll's House, 1879; 
Ghosts, 1881; An Enemy of the People, 1882; 
The Wild Duck, 1884; Rosmersholm, 1886; 
The Lady from the Sea, 1888; Hedda Gabler, 
1890; The Masterbuilder, 1892; Little Eyolf, 
1894; John Gabriel Borkman, 1896; When We 
Dead Awaken, 1899. 

Translations: The standard edition in Eng- 
lish is that of the Collected Works edited by 
William Archer (10 vols. 1910-1912). The 
completest edition for the student ignorant of 
Norse is the great authorised German edition: 
Henrik Ibsen's samtliche Werke in deutscher 
Sprache. Durchgesehen und eingeleitet von G. 
Brandes, J. Elias, P. Schlenther (10 vols. n.d.). 

B. BJORNSTJERNE BJORNSON 

Criticism and Biography: A full but un- 
critical biography of Bjornson exists in C. 
Collin, Bjornstjerne Bjornson (Germ. ed. 
1903). The best brief account in English is 
William Morton Payne, Bjornstjerne Bjornson 
(1910). For criticism consult G. Brandes, 
Henrik Ibsen — Bjornstjerne Bjornson (Eng. ed. 
1899), and his Menscken und Werke (2nd ed. 

1895). 

Works: Between the Battles, 1858; Lame 
Hulda, 1858; King Sverre, 1861; Sigurd 
Slembe, 1862; Mary Stuart, 1864; The Newly 
Married Couple, 1865; Sigurd Jorsalfar, 1872; 
The Editor, 1874; A Bankruptcy, 1874; Tne 



294 CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY] 

King, 1877; Leonarda, 1879; The New Sys- 
tem, 1879; A Gauntlet, 1883; Beyond Our 
Power, Part I, 1883; Geography and Love, 
1885 ; Beyond Our Power, Part II, 1895 ; Paul 
Lange and Tora Parsberg, 1898; Laboremus, 
1901; At Storhove, 1904; Daglarmet, 1904; 
When the New Wine Blooms, 1909. 
Translations: The fullest English edition 
of Bjornson is that edited by Edwin Bjorkman: 
First Series : The New System, The Gauntlet, 
Beyond Our Power, Part I (1913). Second 
Series: Love and Geography, Beyond Our 
Power, Part II, Laboremus (1914). Three 
Comedies by Bjornson (Everyman's Library, 
1913), edited by R. F. Sharp, contains The 
Newly Married Couple, Leonarda, A Gauntlet. 
Sigurd Slembe is translated by W. M. Payne 
(1910), Mary, Queen of Scots by A. Sahlberg 
(1912), and When the New Wine Blooms by 
Lee M. Hollander (Poet Lore, 1911). 

C. AUGUST STRINDBERG 

Criticism and Biography: A fairly full ac- 
count of Strindberg in English is to be found 
in L. Lind-af-Hageby, August Strindberg 
(1913). Criticism will be found in the vol- 
umes of Huneker, Dukes and Henderson and 
in the editorial matter of the English editions 
cited below. 

Works: Hermione, 1869; The Outlaw, 1871 ; 
Master 01 af, 1872; The Secret of the Guild, 



CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 295 

1880; Sir Bengt's Lady, 1882; The Wander- 
ings of Lucky Per, 1883; The Father, 1887; 
Comrades, 1888; Miss Juliet, 1888; Creditors, 
1890; Pariah, 1890; Samum, 1890; The 
Stronger, 1890; The Keys of Heaven, 1892; 
The First Warning, 1893; Debit and Credit, 
1893; Mother Love, 1893; Facing Death, 
1893; Playing with Fire, 1897; The Link, 
1897; To Damascus, I and II, 1898; There 
are Crimes and Crimes, 1899; Christmas, 1899; 
Gustavus Vasa, 1899; Lric XIV, 1899; The 
Saga of the Folkungs, 1899; Gustavus 
Adolphus, 1900; The Dance of Death, I and 
II, 1901; Easter, 1901; Midsummer, 1901 ; 
Engelbrecht, 1901; Charles XII, 1901 ; The 
Crown Bride, 1902; Swanwhite, 1902; The 
Dream Play, 1902; Gustavus III, 1903; Queen 
Christina, 1903; The Nightingale of Witten- 
berg, 1903; To Damascus III, 1904; Storm, 
1907; The Burned Lot, 1907; The Spook 
Sonata, 1907; The Pelican, 1907; The Slip- 
pers of Abu Casen, 1908; The Last Knight, 
1908; The National Director, 1909; The Earl 
of Bjallbo, 1909; The Black Glove, 1909; The 
Great Highway, 1909. 

Translations: A large body of Strindberg's 
work is accessible in English in the three vol- 
umes edited by Edwin Bjorkman : First Series : 
The Dream Play, The Link, The Dance of 
Death, I and II (1912). Second Series: 
There are Crimes and Crimes, Miss Julia, The 



296 CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Stronger, Creditors, Pariah (1913). Third 
Series : Swanwhite, Simoom, Debit and Credit, 
Advent, The Thunderstorm, after the Fire 
(1913). Of equal importance are the two vol- 
umes edited by E. and W. Oland : Vol. 1 : 
The Father, Countess Julie, The Outlaw, The 
Stronger. Vol. II: Comrades, Facing Death, 
Pariah, Easter (1912). Lucky Pehr is trans- 
lated by V. S. Howard (1912). 

Ill 

PLAYS OF THE FRENCH NOVELISTS 

Criticism: The best account of the French 
drama of the mid-century, inclusive of Becque 
but exclusive of his successors, is probably H. 
Parigot, Le Theatre d'kier (1893). In thor- 
ough touch with its subject is Brander Mat- 
thews' French Dramatists of the Nineteenth 
Century (1881). An invaluable summing up 
of the drama of Augier and Dumas fits is to 
be found in G. Lanson, Histoire de la litter a- 
ture frangaise (11th ed. 1909, pp. 1060-1072) 
and of Sarcey's theory of the theatre in the 
same work, pp. 1116-1118. An excellent ac- 
count on a larger scale is Chapter III {Le 
Theatre) in Vol. VIII (Periode contemporaine) 
of L. Petit de Julleville's Histoire de la langue 
et de la litterature frangaise (1899). The two 
volumes of Emile Zola: Le Naturalisme^nu 
theatre (1881) and Nos Auteurs dramatiques 



CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 297 

(1881) are of interest despite Zola's lack of 
critical equipment, and of capital importance 
are Edmond de Goncourt's Preface to Henriette 
Marechal (ed. of 1885), the account in the 
Journal des Goncourts (Vol. II, pp. 261-332, 
ed. of 1904) and Zola's several prefaces in his 
Theatre (ed. of 1907). Notable on the con- 
servative side, more important in France than 
elsewhere, is the study La Reforme du theatre 
in Ferdinand Brunetiere, Essais sur la littera- 
ture contemporaine (3rd ed. 1896). 

A. EDMOND and JULES DE GONCOURT 

Works: Henriette Marechal, 1865; La Patrie 
en Danger, 1868. 

B. EMILE ZOLA 

Works: Therese Raquin, 1873; Les Heritiers 
Rabourdin, 1874; Le Bouton de Rose, 1878. 

C. ALPHONSE DAUDET 

Works : La derniere Idole, 1862 ; Les Ab- 
sents, 1864; L'Oellet blanc, 1865; Le Frere 
aine, 1867. [These four are plays in one act.] 
Le Sacrifice, 1869; L'Arlesienne, 1872. 

D. GUY DE MAUPASSANT 

Works: Histoire du vieux temps, 1879; Mu- 
sotte, 1891 ; La Paix du Menage, 1893. 



298 CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 

IV 

HENRI BECQUE 

Criticism: Accounts of Becque's work, vary- 
ing in value will be found in the books of 
Parigot, Huneker and Dukes. Excellent and 
searching critical discussions occur in Augustin 
Filon, De Dumas a Rostand (1898) and in A. 
Sorel, Essais de psychologie dramatique (1911). 
Works: Sardanapale, 1867; L'Enfant prodi- 
gue, 1868; Michel Pauper, 1870; La Navette, 
1878; Les honettes Femmes, 1880; Les Cor- 
beaux, 1882; La Parisienne, 1885. 
Translations: The Vultures (Les Cor- 
beaux), The Woman of Paris (La Parisienne) 
and The Merry-Go-Round (La Navette) have 
been translated by Freeman Tilden. (The 
Modern Drama Series, 1913.) 

V 
THE NEW STAGES 

For the founding and character of Le Theatre 
libre consult A. Thalasso, Le Theatre Libre and 
Filon, op. ciU The origin of Die Freie Buhne 
is discussed by one of its founders in Paul 
Schlenther, Wozu der Larm? Genesis der 
Freien Buhne (1889), and fully described by 
an eye-witness in A. von Hanstein, Das jungste 
Deutsckland (1901). (Cf. especially Book IV, 
Chapters III, IV, and V.) 



CHAPTER TWO 

THE REALISTIC DRAMA IN FRANCE 

An admirable critical literature has already 
grown up about the contemporary theatre in 
France. The basic work is the great Impressions 
de theatre (10 vols. 1888 ff.) of Jules Lemaitre. 
A brief summing up of the whole movement is 
found in G. Lanson's Histoire de la litterature 
frangaise (11th ed. 1909), pp. 1122-1127, and 
an equally excellent one on a larger scale in 
Georges Pelissiefs Le Mouvement litteraire con- 
temporain (Chapter II, Le Theatre^ 1901). 
Consult also Petit de Julie ville, Histoire de la 
langue et de la litterature frangaise. Loc. 
cit. , Highly suggestive, though somewhat desul- 
tory, are Rene Doumic, De Scribe a Ibsen (1901) 
and again, Augustin Filon, De Dumas a Rostand 
(1898). Excellent for a detailed understanding 
of the period is Henry Bordeaux, La Vie au 
Theatre (3 vols. 19 10-19 13). More systematic 
and, indeed, invaluable are: Rene Doumic, Le 
Theatre nouveau (1908), dealing with Hervieu, 

299 



300 CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Lavedan, Lemaitre, Curel, Brieux, Donnay; A. 
Sorel, Essais de psychology dramatique (1911), 
dealing with the same playwrights and also with 
Becque and Porto-Riche, and Paul Flat, Figures 
du theatre contemporain (2 vols. 1912-13), dis- 
cussing the same group minus Becque and Lavedan 
but including several of the neo-romantics. 
Studies of Brieux and Hervieu may also be found 
in Dukes and Huneker, and of Brieux in the edi- 
torial matter of the English editions cited below. 



II 



A. GEORGES DE PORTO-RICHE 

Works: La Chance de Francoise, 1889; L'ln- 
fidele, 1890; Amoureuse, 1891 ; Le Passe, 1902; 
Le vieil Homme, 1911. 

Translations: Franchise' Luck (La Chance 
de Franchise) in Barrett H. Clark's Four Plays 
by Curel, etc. (19 14). 

B. FRANCOIS DE CUREL 

Works: L'Envers d'une Sainte, 1892; Les 
Fossiles, 1892 ; L'Invitee, 1893 > L' Amour brode, 
1893; La nouvelle Idole, 1895; La Figurante, 
1896; Le Repas du Lion, 1897; La Fille sauv- 
age, 1902; Le Coup d'aile, 1906. 
Translations: The Beat of a Wing (Le 
Coup d'aile), translated by Alice Van Kaath- 



CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 301 

oven (Poet Lore), 1909. The Fossils (Les 
. Fossiles) in Barrett H. Clark's Four Plays by 
Curel, etc. (1914). 

Ill 

HENRI LAVEDAN 

Works: Une Famille, 1890; Le Prince 
d'Aurec, 1892; Les deux Noblesses, 1894; 
Viveurs, 1895; Catherine, 1898; Le nouveau 
Jen, 1898 ; Le vieux Marcheur, 1899 ; Le Mar- 
quis de Priola, 1902; Le Duel, 1905; Sire, 
1909; Le Gout du Vice, 1911; Servir, 1913. 
Translations: Le Prince d'Aurec is trans- 
lated by B. H. Clark in Three Modern Plays 
from the French, 1914. 

IV 

A. EUGENE BRIEUX 

Works: Menages d' Artistes, 1890; Blanch- 
ette, 1892; La Couvee, 1894; L'Engrenage, 
1894; Les Bienfaiteurs, 1896; L'Evasion, 1896; 
Le Berceau, 1898; Resultats des Courses, 1898; 
Les Trois Filles de M. Dupont, 1899 ; La Robe 
rouge, 1900; Les Remplagantes, 1901; Les 
Avaries, 1902; La petite Ami, 1902; Maternite, 
1904; Les Hannetons, 1906; La Franchise, 
1907; Simone, 1908; Suzette, 1909; La Foi, 
1910; La Femme seule, 1912. 
Translations: Two volumes of Brieux* 
plays translated by various hands and vigor- 



302 CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY, 

ously edited by George Bernard Shaw have 
appeared. Vol. I (1911), contains: The 
Three Daughters of M. Dupont, Damaged 
Goods (Les A varies) and Maternity. Vol. II 
(1914), contains The Red Robe (La Robe 
rouge), The Independent Woman (La Femme 
seule) and Faith (La Foi). In addition 
Blanchette and The Escape (L'Evasion) have 
appeared in English with a judicious preface 
by H. L. Mencken (1913). 

B. PAUL HERVIEU 

Works: Les Paroles restent, 1892; Les 
Tenailles, 1895; La Loi de l'Homme, 1897; 
L'Enigme, 1901 ; La Course du Flambeau, 1901 ; 
Theroigne de Mericourt, 1902; Le Dedale, 
1903; Le Re veil, 1905; Modestie, 1908; Con- 
nais-toi, 1909; Bagatelle, 1912. 
Translations: The Labyrinth (Le Dedale) 
has been translated with good biographical and 
bibliographical notes by B. H. Clark and L. 
MacClintock, 1913; Modesty (one act) by B. 
H. Clark, 1913, and In Chains (Les Tenailles) 
by Ysidor Asckenasy (Poet Lore), 1909. 



A. JULES LEMAITRE 

Works: Revoltee, 1889; Le Depute Leveau, 
1890; Mariage blanc, 1891; Flipote, 1893; Les 
Rois, 1893; LAge difficile, 1895; Le Pardon, 



CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 303 

1895; La bonne Helene, 1896; L'Ainee, 1898; 
La Massiere, 1905; Bertrade, 1906. 
Translations: The Pardon is translated by 
B. H. Clark in Three Modern Plays from the 
French (1914). 

B. MAURICE DONNAY 

Works: Lysistrata, 1892; Folle Entreprise, 
1894; Amants, 1895; La Douloureuse, 1897; 
L'Affranchie, 1898; Georgette Lemeunier, 1898; 
Le Torrent, 1899; Education de Prince, 1900; 
La Bascule, 1901; L' autre Danger, 1902; Le 
Retour de Jerusalem, 1902; L'Escalade, 1904; 
Paraitre, 1906; La Patronne, 1908; Le Menage 
de Moliere, 1912; Les Eclaireuses, 1913. 
Translations: The Other Danger (L'autre 
Danger) is translated by Charlotte T. David in 
Three Modern Plays from the French (1914). 



CHAPTER THREE 

THE NATURALISTIC DRAMA IN GERMANY 

The best book on all phases of modern German 
literature is the lamented Richard Moritz Meyer's 
Die deutsche Literatur des neunzehnten Jahrhun- 
derts (4th ed. 1910). It contains a full treat- 
ment of the modern drama. Of little critical 
value but packed with useful information is F. 
Rummer's Deutsche Liter aturgeschichte des neun- 
zehnten Jahrhunderts (1909). A good manual 
exists in Georg Witkowski's Das deutsche Drama 
des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (2nd ed. 1906; 
Eng. ed. 1909). S. Friedmann's Das deutsche 
Drama des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, Neuere 
und neuste Zeit (11th ed. 1904), is sound and 
trustworthy for the playwrights discussed. Edgar 
Steigefs Das Werden des neueren Dramas (2 
vols. 1903) is subtle and suggestive but highly 
personal. Admirable though somewhat anti- 
quated now is Berthold Litzmann's Das deutsche 
Drama in den literarischen Bewegungen der Ge- 
genwart (4th ed. 1897). The best book on the 

304 



CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 305 

modern drama in any language is Robert F. Ar- 
nold's Das moderne Drama (1908). The author 
combines exhaustive learning with fine critical 
taste and great charm of style. Although he 
avowedly stresses the German drama, he treats 
every modern playwright of note. No one can 
work in this field without becoming deeply in- 
debted to Arnold. A delightful personal com- 
mentary on the whole German movement will be 
found in Adalbert von Hanstein's Das jiingste 
Deutschland (1901). Discussions of individual 
playwrights, especially of Hauptmann and Suder- 
mann, occur in many collections of studies. A 
few of these may be mentioned: Georg Brandes, 
Menschen und Werke (2nd ed. 1895); Heinrich 
Bulthaupt, Dramaturgie des Schauspiels (vol. IV, 
1901) ; Moeller van den Bruck, Die Zeitgenossen 
(1906); Kuno Francke, Glimpses of Modern 
German Culture (1898); Otto Heller, Studies in 
Modern German Literature (1905). 

I 

A. ARNO HOLZ and JOHANNES SCHLAF 

Wop.ks: Die Familie Selicke, 1890. 

B. ARNO HOLZ 

Works: Sozialaristokraten, 1896; Traumulus 
(with O. Jerschke), 1904. 



306 CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 

C. JOHANNES SCHLAF 

Works: Meister Oelze, 1892; Gertrud, 1898; 
Die Feindlichen, 1899; Weigand, 1906. 

II 

GERHART HAUPTMANN 

Criticism and Biography: The best-known 
monographs on Hauptmann are Paul Schlenth- 
er's Gerhart Hauptmann, Sein Lebensgang und 
seine Dichtung (Neue ganzlich umgearbeitete 
Ausgabe, 6th ed. 1912), and Adolf Bartel's 
Gerhart Hauptmann (2nd ed. 1906). The first 
is authoritative; the second, like all of Bartel's 
writings, is to be viewed with extreme suspicion. 
Briefer volumes are: Karl Holl, Gerhart 
Hauptmann (Eng. ed. 1913), E. Sulger- 
Gebing, Gerhart Hauptmann (1909), A. von 
Hanstein, Gerhart Hauptmann (1898) and U. 
C. Worner, Gerhart Hauptmann (2nd ed. 
1901). A very elaborate analysis of all the 
plays exists in Kurt Sternberg's Gerhart Haupt- 
mann, Der Entzuicklungsgang seiner Dichtungen 
(1910). Criticism of Hauptmann is found in 
all the works on modern German literature cited 
above, as well as in the volumes of Huneker, 
Dukes, Hale, Henderson, Chandler and in the 
introductions to the English edition cited be- 
low. 

Works: Vor Sonnenaufgang, 1889; Das 
Friedensfest, 1890; Einsame Menschen, 1891; 



CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 307 

Die Weber, 1892; College Crampton, 1892 ; 
Der Biberpelz, 1893; Hannele, 1893; Florian 
Geyer, 1896; Die versunkene Glocke, 1896; 
Fuhrmann Henschel, 1898; Schluck und Jau, 
1899; Michael Kramer, 1900; Der rote Hahn, 
1901; Der arme Heinrich, 1902; Rose Bernd, 
1903; Elga, 1905; Die Jungfern vom Bischofs- 
berg, 1907; Kaiser Karls Geisel, 1908; Gri- 
selda, 1909; Die Ratten, 1911; Gabriel Schill- 
ings Fluent, 1912; Festspiel, 1913; Der Bogen 
des Odysseus, 1914. 

Translations : The dramatic Works of Ger- 
hart Hauptmann (1912-1915), edited and 
chiefly translated by Ludwig Lewisohn, now 
extends to five volumes. The sixth volume, to 
be issued shortly, includes the later plays in 
prose. A seventh volume will include the later 
plays in verse. It is the aim of this edition to 
make Hauptmann as accessible as Ibsen to the 
English reading public. 

Ill 

HERMANN SUDERMANN 

Works : Die Ehre, 1889 ; Sodoms Ende, 1891 ; 
Heimat, 1893; Die Schmetterlingsschlacht, 
1895 ; Das Gliick im Winckel, 1896 ; Morituri 
(Teja, Fritzchen, Das ewig Mannliche), 1897; 
Johannes, 1898; Die drei Reiherfedern, 1899; 
Johannesfeuer, 1900; Es lebe das Leben, 1902; 
Der Sturmgeselle Sokrates, 1903; Stein unter 



3o8 CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Steinen, 1905; Das Blumenboot, 1905; Rosen 
(Die Lichtstreifen, Margot, Der letzte Besuch, 
Die feme Prinzessin), 1907; Strandkinder, 
1910; Der Bettler von Syrakus, 1911 ; Der gute 
Ruf, 1912. 

Translations: Magda (Heimat) is trans- 
lated by C. E. A. Winslow (1895), John the 
Baptist (Johannes) by Beatrice Marshall 
(1908), The Three Heron's Feathers (Die drei 
Reiherfedern), by Helen T. Porter (Poet Lore; 
in prose ( !) 1900), The Fires of St. John 
(Johannesfeuer), by Charles Swickard (1904), 
The Joy of Living (Es lebe das Leben), by 
Edith Wharton (1903), Roses (Rosen), by 
Grace Frank (1909) and Morituri, by Archi- 
bald Alexander (1910). 



IV 
A. MAX HALBE 

Works: Ein Emporkommling, 1889; Freie 
Liebe, 1890; Eisgang, 1892; Jugend, 1893; ^ er 
Amerikafahrer, 1894; Lebenswende, 1896; 
Mutter Erde, 1897; Der Eroberer, 1899; Die 
Heimatlosen, 1899; Das tausendjahrige Reich, 
1900; Haus Rosenhagen, 1901; Walpurgis- 
nacht, 1903; Der Strom, 1904; Die Insel der 
Seligen, 1906; Das wahre Gesicht, 1907; Blaue 
Berge, 1909; Der Ring des Gauklers, 1912; 
Freiheit, 1914. 
Translations: The Rosenhagens (Haus Ro- 



CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 309 

senhagen), translated by Paul H. Grumann 
(Poet Lore, 1910). 

B. GEORG HIRSCHFELD 

Works: Zu Hause, 1896; Die Mutter, 1896; 
Agnes Jordan, 1898; Pauline, 1899; Der junge 
Goldner, 1901; Der Weg zum Licht, 1902; 
Nebeneinander, 1904; Spatfriihling, 1906; 
Mieze und Maria, 1907; Das zweite Leben, 
1910. 

C. MAX DREYER 

Works: Drei, 1892; Winterschlaf, 1895; 
Eine, 1896; In Behandlung, 1897; Grossmama, 
1897; Liebestraume, Hans, Unter blonden 
Bestien, all 1898; Der Probekandidat, 1899; 
Der Sieger, 1900; Schelmenspiele, 1901; Stich- 
wahl, 1902; Das Tal des Lebens, 1902; Die 
Siebzehnjahrigen, 1904; Venus Amathusia, 
1905; Die Hochzeitsfackel, 1906; Des Pfarrers 
Tochter von Streladorf, 1909; Der lachelnde 
Knabe, 1911; Die Frau Des Kommandeurs, 
1912; Der griinende Zweig, 1913. 

V 

A. OTTO ERICH HARTLEBEN 

Works: Der Frosch, 1889; Angele, 1891; 
Hanna Jagert, 1893; Die Erziehung zur Ehe, 
1893; Ein Ehrenwort, 1894; Die sittliche For- 
derung, 1897; Die Befreiten, 1898; Ein wahr- 
haft guter Mensch, 1899; Rosenmontag, 1901; 



310 CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Im griinen Baum zur Nachtigal, 1905; 
Diogenes, 1905. 

Translations: Hanna Jagert, translated by 
Sarah E. Holmes (Poet Lore, 1913). 

B. FRANK WEDEKIND 

Works : Friihlings Erwachen, 1891 ; Erd- 
geist, 1895; Der Liebestrank, 1899; Der Kam- 
mersanger, 1900; Marquis von Keith, 1900; Die 
Biichse der Pandora, 1903; Hidalla, 1904; To- 
tentanz, 1906; Musik, 1907; So ist das Leben, 
1907; Die Zensur, 1908; Oaha, 1908; Der 
Stein der Weisen, 1909; In alien Satteln 
gerecht, 1910; Mit alien Hunden gehetzt, 
1910; In alien Wassern gewaschen, 1910; 
Franziska, 1912. 

Translations: The Awakening of Spring 
(Friihlings Erwachen) is translated by F. J. 
Ziegler (1910), The Heart of the Tenor (Der 
Kammersanger) is adapted by Andre Tridon 
(Smart Set, 1913), and Such is Life (So ist das 
Leben) is translated by F. J. Ziegler (1912). 

VI 

ARTHUR SCHNITZLER 

Works: Anatol, 1889; Das Marchen, 1891; 
Liebelei, 1894; Freiwild, 1896; Das Vermacht- 
nis, 1897; Der grime Kakadu (Der grime Ka- 
kadu, Paracelsus, Die Gefahrtin), 1898; Der 
Schleier der Beatrice, 1899; Lebendige Stunden 



CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 311 

(Lebendige Stunden, Die Frau mit dem Dolche, 
Die letzten Masken, Literatur), 1901 ; Der 
einsame Weg, 1903; Zwischenspiel, 1904; 
Marionetten (Der Puppenspieler, Der tapfere 
Cassian, Zum grossen Wurstel), 1904; Der 
Ruf des Lebens, 1905; Komtesse Mizzi, 1909; 
Der junge Medardus, 1909; Das weite Land, 
1910; Professor Bernhardi, 1912. 
Translations: Anatol has been gracefully- 
adapted by Granville Barker. Light o' Love 
(Liebelei) is translated by B. Q. Morgan (The 
Drama, 1912) ; The Green Cockatoo, Paracelsus 
and The Mate, by H. B. Samuel (1913) ; The 
Legacy (Das Vermiichtnis), by Mary L. 
Stephenson (Poet Lore, 191 1) ; The Lady with 
the Dagger (Die Frau mit dem Dolche), by 
Helen T. Porter (Poet Lore, 1904), and Living 
Hours (Lebendige Stunden), by the same (Poet 
Lore, 1906). The Lonely Way, Interlude and 
Countess Mizzi (Der einsame, Weg, Zwischen- 
spiel, Komtesse Mizzi) translated by Edwin 
Bjorkman form a volume in the Modern 
Drama Series (1914), and Professor Bernhardi 
appears in a much abbreviated and badly dis- 
figured version by Mrs. Emil Pohli (1913). 



CHAPTER FOUR 

THE RENAISSANCE OF THE ENGLISH DRAMA 

Owing partly to the recent appearance of a mod- 
ern movement in the English drama and partly 
to the unfortunate tradition which, in England 
and America, denies living artists and their audi- 
ences the benefit of serious criticism, no satisfac- 
tory account of the subject matter of this chapter 
has hitherto been written. Mario Rorsa's The 
English Stage of To-day (1908) suffers from its 
foreign authorship. So does Augustin Filon's 
The English Stage (1897). The latter volume, 
in addition, was written before the modern thea- 
tre had produced its more notable work. The 
two volumes of Mr. Henry Arthur Jones, The 
Renascence of the English Drama (1895) and 
The Foundations of a National Drama (1913) 
betray on every page their author's abiding in- 
tellectual immaturity and his dedication to out- 
worn theatricalism. The soundest work on the 
modern drama in England is to be found in sev- 

312 



CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 313 

cral collections of theatrical criticism. In these 
briefer or longer reviews one may find an intelli- 
gent, sometimes a brilliant and acute commentary 
on the recent development of the English theatre. 
The volumes in question are: William Archer, 
The Theatrical World (5 vols. 1893-1897); 
George Bernard Shaw, Dramatic Opinions and 
Essays (2 vols. 1906) ; C. E. Montague, Drama- 
tic Values (1911); A. B. Walkley, The Drama 
and Life (1911). 

II 

A. HENRY ARTHUR JONES 

Works: A Clerical Error, 1879; The Silver 
King, 1882; Saints and Sinners, 1884; The 
Middleman, 1889; Judah, 1890; The Dancing 
Girl, 1891 ; The Crusaders, 1891 ; The Bauble 
Shop, 1893; The Tempter, 1893; The Mas- 
queraders, 1894; The Case of Rebellious Susan, 
1894; The Triumph of the Philistines, 1895; 
Michael and His Lost Angel, 1896; The 
Rogue's Comedy, 1896; The Physician, 1897; 
The Liars, 1897; The Manoeuvres of Jane, 
1898; Carnac Sahib, 1899; The Lackay's Car- 
nival, 1900; Mrs. Dane's Defence, 1900; The 
Princess' Nose, 1902 ; Chance, 1902 ; The Idol, 
1902; The Whitewashing of Julia, 1903; 
Joseph Entangled, 1904; The Chevalier, 1904; 
The Heroic Stubbs, 1906; The Hypocrites, 



3H CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 

1906; The Evangelist, 1907; Dolly Reforms 
Herself, 1908; The Knife, 1909; We Can't Be 
As Bad As All That, 1910; The Fall in 
Rookies, 19 10; The Ogre, 1911; The Divine 
Gift, 1913; Mary Goes First, 1913; The Lie, 
1914. 

B. ARTHUR WING PINERO 

Works : Two Hundred a Year, 1877 ; Daisy's 
Escape, 1879; Hester's Mystery, 1880; By- 
gones, 1880; The Money Spinner, 1880; Im 
prudence, 1881 ; The Squire, 1881 ; The Rector 
1882; The Rocket, 1883; Lords and Commons 
1883; Low Water, 1884; The Weaker Sex 
1884; The Magistrate, 1885; The Schoolmis 
tress, 1886; The Hobby-Horse, 1886; Dandy 
Dick, 1887; Sweet Lavender, 1888; The Profli- 
gate, 1889; The Cabinet Minister, 1890; Lady 
Bountiful, 1891 ; The Times, 1891 ; The Ama- 
zons, 1893 ; The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, 1893 ; 
The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith, 1895; The 
Benefit of the Doubt, 1895; The Princess and 
the Butterfly, 1897; Trelawney of the Wells, 
1898; The Gay Lord Quex, 1899; Iris, 1901; 
Letty, 1903; A Wife without a Smile, 1904; 
His House in Order, 1906; The Thunderbolt, 
1908; Mid-Channel, 1909; Preserving Mr. 
Panmure, 1911; The "Mind the Paint" Girl, 
1912; The Widow of Wasdale Head, 1912. 



CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 315 

III 
OSCAR WILDE 

Works: Vera, 1882; The Duchess of Padua, 
1891; Lady Windermere's Fan, 1892; A 
Woman of No Importance, 1893; Salome: 
Drame en un acte, 1893 ; The Ideal Husband, 
1895; The Importance of Being Earnest, 1895. 

IV 

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 

Criticism and Biography: Archibald Hen- 
derson's George Bernard Shaw: His Life and 
Works (1911), is interesting and valuable; 
Gilbert K. Chesterton's George Bernard Shaw 
(1910), is brilliant and suggestive, but essen- 
tially uncritical and polemic. Notable is 
Joseph McCabe's George Bernard Shaw: A 
Critical Study (1914). 

Works: Widowers' Houses, 1892; The Phi- 
landerer, 1893; Mrs. Warren's Profession, 
1893; Arms and the Man, 1894; Candida, 
1894; The Man of Destiny, 1895; You Never 
Can Tell, 1896. (These seven pla} r s compose 
the two volumes of Plays Pleasant and Un- 
pleasant, 1898.) The Devil's Disciple, 1897; 
Caesar and Cleopatra, 1898; Captain Brass- 
bound's Conversion, 1899. (These three plays 
compose the volume: Three Plays for Puri- 
tans, 1900.) Man and Superman, 1903; John 
Bull's Other Island, 1904; How he lied to her 



316 CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Husband, 1904; Major Barbara, 1905; The 
Doctor's Dilemma, 1906; Getting Married, 
1908; The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, 1909; 
Press-Cuttings, 1909; The Dark Lady of the 
Sonnets, 1910; Misalliance, 1910; Fanny's First 
Play, 1911; Androcles and the Lion, 1912; 
Pygmalion, 1912; Overruled, 1912. 

V 

A. GRANVILLE BARKER 

Works: The Marrying of Anne Leete, 1899; 
The Voysey Inheritance, 1905; Waste, 1907; 
The Madras House, 1909. 

B. JOHN GALSWORTHY 

Works: The Silver Box, 1906; Joy, 1907; 
Strife, 1909; The Eldest Son, 1909; Justice, 
1910; The Little Dream, 1911; The Pigeon, 
1912; The Fugitive, 1913; The Mob, 1914. 



CHAPTER FIVE 

THE NEO-ROMANTIC MOVEMENT IN THE EURO- 
PEAN DRAMA 

The neo-rom antic drama is here surveyed as a 
whole for the first time. There is abundant ma- 
terial, however, for a study of the larger literary 
movement from which it sprang. The best book 
in English is Arthur Symons' The Symbolist 
Movement in Literature (2nd ed. rev. 1908). 
Very useful and containing good bibliographical 
material is Andre Barre's he Symbolisme (1912). 
Of the utmost importance are single passages and 
whole studies too numerous to specify (vide, 
passim, e.g., the exquisite exercitation on faith, 
Vol. Ill, p. 329) in Jules Lemaitre, Les Contem- 
^orains (6 vols. 1886-1896). An admirably 
philosophic exposition of the protest against the 
positivistic basis of naturalism will be found in 
the opening essay, he Pessi?nisme contemporain, 
of Georges Pelissier's Essais de litterature con- 
temporaine (1893). Further documents of cap- 
ital importance are: Jules Huret, Enquete sur 

317 



318 CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 

V Evolution Utter aire (1891); Anatole France, 
La Vie litteraire (4 vols, n.d.; articles contributed 
to Le Temps, 1887-1893) ; Hugo von Hofmanns- 
thal, Die Prosaischen Schriften (2 vols. 1907) 
and W. B. Yeats, The Celtic Twilight (1893) 
and Ideas of Good and Evil (1903), now form- 
ing volumes IV and V of his Collected Works in 
Verse and Prose (8 vols., 1908 ff). Full discus- 
sion of Rostand will be found in the works of 
Doumic, Filon and Paul Flat cited under Chap- 
ter Two, and of Hauptmann and Hofmannsthal 
in the works of Meyer and Arnold cited under 
Chapter Three. For the rise of neo-romanticism 
in Germany consult A. von Hanstein, Das jilngste 
Deutschland (1901), especially Book Six. A 
highly specialised critical literature has grown up 
about the Irish movement. The chief documents 
are: H. S. Krans, William Butler Teats and the 
Irish Literary Movement (1904); W. B.. Yeats, 
J. M. Synge and the Ireland of His Time (1911); 
F. Bickley, J. M. Synge and the Irish Dramatic 
Movement (1912); Lady Gregory, Our Irish 
Theatre, A Chapter of Autobiography (1913); 
Cornelius Weygandt, Irish Plays and Playwrights 
(1913). An intelligent brief account of the 
movement will be found in Oliver Elton's Mod- 
ern Studies, pp. 285-320 (1907). 



CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 319 

II 

MAURICE MAETERLINCK 

Criticism and Biography: It would be un- 
profitable to make more than a small selection 
from the mass of critical material on Maeter- 
linck. An excellent discussion will be found 
in Arnold's Das moderne Drama {vide supra) 
and in Flat's Figures de Theatre contemporain. 
Vol. 2 {vide supra). Other noteworthy studies 
are W. L. Courtney, The Development of Mau- 
rice Maeterlinck and Other Studies (1904), J. 
Buschmann, Maurice Maeterlinck (Vol. 54 of 
H. Graef's Beitrdge zur Liter aturgeschichte, 
1908), and in Archibald Henderson's Interpre- 
ters of the Modern Spirit (1911). See, also, 
Huneker, Dukes, Hale, Henderson and Chand- 
ler. For further books, essays and articles con- 
sult the full bibliography in Jethro Bithell, 
The Life and Writings of Maurice Maeterlinck 
{Great Writers, 1913). 

Works: La Princesse Maleine, 1889; L'ln- 
truse, 1890; Les Aveugles, 1890; Les sept 
Princesses, 1891; Pelleas et Melisande, 1892; 
Alladine et Palomides, 1894; Interieur, 1894; 
Le Mort de Tintagiles, 1894; Aglavaine et 
Selysette, 1896; Ariane et Barbe-bleu, 1901; 
Sceur Beatrice, 1901; Monna Vanna, 1902; 
Joyzelle, 1903; L'Oiseau bleu, 1909; Maria 
Magdalene, 1910. 
Translations : The eight plays from La 



320 CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Princesse Maleine through Le Mort de Tinta- 
giles were all exquisitely rendered into Eng- 
lish by the late Richard Hovey and are obtain- 
able in the uniform edition of 191 1. Aglavaine 
and Selysette is translated by Alfred Sutro 
(1911), Ariane and Bluebeard and Sister Bea- 
trice, by Bernard Miall (1902), Monna Vanna, 
by A. I. duP. Coleman (1904), and Joyzelle, 
The Bluebird and Maria Magdalene, all by 
A. Teixeira de Mattos in 1907, 1909 (with an 
additional act 1912) and 1910 respectively. 

Ill 

EDMOND ROSTAND 

Works : Les Romanesques, 1894 > La Princesse 
lointaine, 1895; La Samaritaine, 1896; Cyrano 
de Bergerac, 1897 » L'Aiglon, 1900 ; Chantecler, 
1910. 

Translations: The Romancers (Les Ro- 
manesques) is translated by Mary Hender 
(1899), The Princess Faraway (La Princesse 
lointaine), by Charles Renauld (1899), Cyrano 
de Bergerac, by Gertrude Hall (1898), by 
Gladys Thomas and M. F. Guillement (1900), 
by Charles Renauld (1898), and by H. T. 
Kingsbury (1898), L'Aiglon, by L. N. Par- 
ker (1900), and Chantecler, by Gertrude Hall 
(1900). All the translations deliberately give 
up the poetry of Rostand and are therefore prac- 
tically worthless. 



CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 321 

IV 

A. GERHART HAUPTMANN 

(See Bibliography of Chapter Three, Section 
II.) 

B. HUGO VON HOFMANNSTHAL 

Criticism and Biography : In addition to the 
criticism of Hofmannsthal in the works cited 
under Chapter Three, consult E. Sulger-Gebing, 
Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1905), A. Kall- 
mann, Hugo von Hofmannsthal (Vol. 47 of 
H. Graef's Beitrage zur Liter aturgesc hie hte, 
1907), and Karl Federn, Essays zur Ver- 
gleichenden Liter aturgeschichte (1904). 
Works: Gestern, 1891; Der Tod des Tizian, 
1892; Der Tor und der Tod, 1894; Der weisse 
Facher, 1898; Theater in Versen, 1899, con- 
taining: Die Frau am Fenster, 1898, Die 
Hochzeit der Sobeide, 1899, and Der Aben- 
teurer und die Sangerin, 1899; Kleine Dramen 
1906, containing Das Bergwerk zu Falun, 1900, 
Der Kaiser und die Hexe, 1900, and Das 
Kleine Welttheater, 1903; Elektra, 1903; Das 
gerettete Venedig, 1905; CEdipus und die 
Sphinx, 1905; Cristinas Heimreise, 1910; Der 
Rosenkavalier, 1911 Jedermann, 1912; Ari- 
adne auf Naxos, 1912. 

Translations: Death and the Fool (Der 
Tor und der Tod) is translated (after a fash- 
ion!) by Max Batt (Poet Lore, 1913), Electra, 



322 CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 

by Arthur Symons, a poet of equal rank 
(1908). A version of The Marriage of So- 
beide (Die Hochzeit der Sobeide), by B. Q. 
Morgan appears in Vol. 20 of the German 
Classics of the XIX and XX Centuries. 



A. WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 

Works: The Countess Cathleen, 1890; The 
Land of Heart's Desire, 1894; The Shadowy 
Waters, 1900; Cathleen ni Hoolihan, 1902; 
A Pot of Broth, 1902; Where there is Noth- 
ing, 1903; The King's Threshold, 1903; The 
Hour Glass, 1903; On Baile's Strand, 1904; 
Deirdre, 1906; The Golden Helmet, 1908; The 
Green Helmet, 1910. 

B. LADY A. GREGORY 

Works: Twenty-Five, 1903; Spreading the 
News, 1904; Kincora, 1904; The White Cock- 
ade, 1905; Hyacinth Halvey, 1906; The Gaol 
Gate, 1906; The Caravans, 1906; The Jack- 
daw, 1907; The Rising of the Moon, 1907; 
Devorgilla, 1907 ; The Workhouse Ward, 1908; 
The Image, 1909; The Travelling Man, 1910; 
The Full Moon, 1910; Coats, 1910; The De- 
liverer, 1911; MacDarragh's Wife, 1912; The 
Bogie Man, 1912; Darner's Gold, 1912. 



CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 323 

JOHN MILLINGTON SYNGE 

Works: In the Shadow of the Glen, 1903; 
Riders to the Sea, 1904; The Well of the 
Saints, 1905; The Playboy of the Western 
World, 1907; The Tinker's Wedding, 1909; 
Deirdre of the Sorrows, 1910. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Achurch, Miss Janet, 173. 

Age difficile, L', 90, 91, 94. 

Agiavaine et Sttysette, 231. 

Agnes Jordan, 141, 142, 144- 
146. 

Aiglon, U, 242. 

Alladine et Palomides, 229- 
230, 230-231. 

Also sprach Zarathustra, 227, 
247. 

Amants, 95-97, 226. 

'Amour brode, U, 60. 

Amour euse, 48, 54-57. 

Anatol, 157, 159-160, 202. 

Ancey, George, 45. 

And Pippa Dances, 257. 

Antoine, Andre, 44, 45, 173. 

Archer, William, 173, 182. 

Ariane et Barbe-bleu, 231. 

ArUsienne, L', 38. 

Arms and the Man, 195. 

Arnold, Matthew, 167, 201: 
The Study of Celtic Lit- 
erature, 274. 

Arthurian legend, 249. 

As You Like It, 237. 

Augier, fimile, 34, 35, 65, 90, 
120, 169: 
Le Qendre de M. Poirier, 20. 

autre Danger, L', 95, 97-98. 

AvarUs, Les, 25, 75. 

Aveugles, Les, 232-233, 234, 
235. 



Bagatelle, 83, 88-89. 
Bahr, Hermann, 163. 
Ballad of a Nun, 231. 
Balzac, Honore de, 27: 

Contes Drdlatiques, 37. 
Bankruptcy, A, 26. 
Barker, Granville, 121, 174, 
202-207, 211, 218: 
The Madras House, 203- 

205, 206. 
The Marrying of Anne 

Leete, 206. 
The Voysey Inheritance, 

206. 
Waste, 205-206, 206. 
Baudelaire, Charles, 247. 
Beaver Coat, The, 113, 115, 

123, 126, 135. 
Becket, 171. 

Becque, Henri, 39-44, 47, 
101, 173: 
Les Corbeaux, 40, 41, 43, 

173. 
L'Enfant prodigue, 40. 
Les HonnUes Femmes, 41. 
Michel Pauper, 40. 
La Navette, 41. 
La Parisienne, 40, 43, 173. 
Before Dawn, 110, 113, 125, 

126, 128. 
Belasco, David, 175. 
Benefit of the Doubt, The, 
185. 



327 



328 



INDEX 



Bennett, Arnold: 

Milestones, 144. 
Berceau, Le, 77-78. 
Bergson, Henri, 8: 

Bergsonians, 197. 
Bergwerk zu Falun, Das, 260, 

263. 
Bernstein, Frau Else (See 

Rosmer, Ernst). 
Bernstein, Henri, 51. 
Beyerlein, Adam, 163. 
Beyond Our Strength, 26. 
Bierbaum, Otto Julius: 

Gugeline, 249. 
Bjornson, Bjornstjerne, 23- 
27: 

A Bankruptcy, 26. 

Beyond Our Strength, 26. 

A Gauntlet, 24, 25. 

The King, 23. 

The New System, 9. 

The Newly Married Couple, 
23. 
Blanchette, 48, 74-75, 77. 
Blatter fur die Kunst (foot- 
note), 248. 
Blumenboot, Das, 130, 133. 
Blumenthal, Oscar, 103. 
Bourget, Pauls 

Le Disciple, 221. 
Bouton de Rose, Le, 37. 
Bow of Odysseus, The, 257. 
Braddon, Mrs. M. E., 181. 
Brahm, Otto, 45, 46. 
Brand, 7, 9. 
Breville, Paul de, 35. 
Brieux, Eugene, 25, 45, 48, 
50, 51, 70-80, 90, 100, 149: 

Les AvarUs, 25, 75. 

Blanchette, 48, 74-75, 77. 

Le Berceau, 77-78. 

Le Couvee, 78. 



Damaged Goods (see Les 

A varies). 
L'Engr6nage, 77. 
La Frangaise, 92, 
La Foi, 72-73. 
Les Hannetons, 78, 79. 
Manages a" Artistes, 48, 72, 

77. 
La petite Amie, 77, 78-79. 
Les Bemplagantes, 74, 77. 
Resultat des Courses, 74. 
Browning, Robert, 238. 
Brunetiere, Ferdinand: 
La Science et la Religion, 
227. 
Biichse der Pandora, Die, 150, 

153. 
Byron, George Gordon Noel, 
146. 



Candida, 200. 

Capus, Alfred, 51. 

Carlyle, Thomas, 198. 

Case of Rebellious Susan, The, 
178-180. 

Caste, 169-170. 

Catherine, 69. 

Cenci, 170. 

Chambers, Robert W.: 
The Firing Line, 174. 

Chance de Frangoise, La, 53- 
54. 

Chantecler, 227, 236, 242-247, 
256, 275. 

Charlemagne's Hostage, 257. 

Chaucer, Goeffrey, 236. 

Cleopatra, 225. 

Collier, Jeremy: 
Short View of the Immo- 
rality and Profaneness of 
the English Stage, 166. 



INDEX 



329 



Collins, Wilkie, 174: 

The Woman in White, 174. 
Colvin, Sir Sidney, 266. 
Come'die-Franqaise, 54, 64. 
Come'die Marigny, La, 98. 
Comrades, 28, 29-30, 31. 
Corate, Auguste, 8. 
Conflagration, The, 125, 126. 
Congreve, Thomas, 190. 
Connais-toi, 82, 83, 88, 101. 
Contes Drolatiques , 37. 
Contemporains, Les, 90. 
Corbeaux, Les, 40, 41, 43, 173. 
Corneille, 246-247. 
Countess Cathleen, The, 271. 
Coup d'Aile, Le, 59-60. 
Course dm Flambeau, La, 5, 

82, 83, 84-86. 
Court Theatre, 183. 
Courtelines, Georges, 51. 
Couvee, La, 78. 
Creditors, 28, 30, 31. 
Curel, Francois de, 45, 48, 58- 
63: 

L } Armour brode, 60. 

Le Coup d'Aile, 59-60. 

L'Envers d'une Sainte, 60. 

La Figurante, 60. 

La Fille Sauvage, 61. 

Les Fossiles, 61-63. 

L'lnviUe, 60. 
Custom of the Country, The, 

174. 
Cymbeline, 257. 
Cyrano de Bergerac, 236, 239- 
242. 

Damaged Goods (See Ava- 

rie's, Les). 
Ddmmerung, 135. 
Dance of the Seven Sins, The, 

267. 



D'Annunzio, Gabriele, 248, 

258. 
Darwin, Charles, 224. 
Daudet, Alphonse, 38-39, 104: 
L'ArUsienne, 38. 
Trente Ans de Paris {foot- 
note), 38. 
Davidson, John: 

Ballad of a Nun, 231. 
De Dumas a Rostand {foot- 
note), 50. 
Dtdale, Le, 77, 84. 
Depute Leveau, Le, 48, 91. 
Dervorgilla, 268. 
deux Noblesses, Les, 64, 65- 

66. 
Dickens, Charles, 113. 
Dies Irae (see Poemes an- 
tiques). 
Disciple, Le, 221. 
Doll's House, A, 12, 19, 44, 

173. 
Donnay, Maurice, 94-99, 101, 
226: 
Amants, 95-97, 226. 
L'autre Danger, 95, 97- 

98. 
Les Eclaireuses, 95, 98-99. 
Dostoieffsky, Feodor, 247. 
Drayman Henschel, 114, 121, 

127, 250. 
Drei, 135, 139. 

drei Reiherfedern, Die. 249. 
Dreiser, Theodore: 

Sister Carrie, 174. 
Dreyer, Max, 136, 139-141: 
Drei, 135, 139. 
Probekandidat, 140-141. 
Winterschlaf , 139-140. 
Dryden, John, 89, 126, 166, 

246. 
Duel, Le, 66, 103, 134. 



33° 



INDEX 



Dumas fiU, Alexander, 34, 90, 

129, 169. 
"Duchess," The, 183. 

Eclaireuses, Les, 95, 98-99. 

Ehre, Die, 128. 

einsame Weg, Der, 154, 155, 

161-162. 
Eldest Son, The, 169, 188, 203, 

209, 212, 216-21 T, 218, 226. 
Elektra, 22, 260, 263, 275. 
Eliot, George: 

The Mill on the Floss, 126. 
Emperor and Galilean, 7. 
Enemy of the People, An, 13. 
Enfant prodigue, U, 40. 
Engrenage, U, 77. 
finigme, IS, 89. 
Envers d'une Sainte, U, 60. 
Erbforster, Der, 169. 
Erdgeist, 153. 
Ernst, Otto: 
Flachsmann als Erzieher, 

141. 
Erziehung zur Ehe, Die, 147- 

148, 148. 
Es lebe das Leben, 129, 130, 

132. 
Eucken, Rudolf, 8, 276. 
Euclid, 81. 



Fabre, Canaille, 45. 

Familie Selicke, Die, 106-110. 

Famille, Une, 64. 

Father, The, 28, 29, 32. 

Faust, 262. 

Faustus and Helen, 267. 

Fielding, Henry, 105, 128. 

Figurante, La, 60. 

Fille Sauvage, La, 61. 

Filon, Augustin: 



De Dumas a Rostand (foot- 
note), 50. 

Firing Line, The, 174. 

Flachsmann als Erzieher, 141. 

Flaubert, Gustave, 34, 128. 

Flipole, 91, 94. 

Foi, La, 72-73. 

Fool of the World, The, 267. 

Forbes-Robertson, Sir John- 
stone, 183. 

Fossiles, Les, 61-63. 

Fourteenth Street Theatre, 
182. 

Frangaise, La, 92. 

France, Anatole, 154: 
La vie litteraire, 224-225. 

Free Stage Society, The, 45. 

Freiwild, 158, 159. 

Fromentin, Eugene, 108. 

Fruhlings Erwaehen, 150-152, 
153. 

Fugitive, The, 209, 217, 218. 

Fulda, Ludwig, 135, 247, 248, 
249: 
Die Sklavin, 135. 
Talisman, 248. 
Das verlorene Paradis, 135. 

Gabriel Schilling's Flight, 116, 

252. 
Galsworthy, John, 41, 101, 

111, 121, 174, 175, 176, 

177, 180, 202, 207-218, 266: 
The Eldest Son, 169, 188, 

203, 209, 212, 216-217, 

218, 226. 
The Fugitive, 209, 217, 218. 
The Inn of Tranquillity, 

207-208. 
Joy, 209. 
Justice, 209, 212, 213-214, 

218. 



INDEX 



33i 



The Little Dream, 209. 

The Pigeon, 75, 209, 215- 
216, 218. 

The Silver Box, 209, 212, 
218. 

Some Platitudes Concerning 
the Drama, 207-208. 

Strife, 5, 209, 210-211, 212, 
213, 214-215, 218, 220. 
Gauntlet, A, 24, 25. 
Gay Lord Quex, The, 185. 
Gefahrtin, Die, 161. 
Gendre de M. Poirier, Le, 20. 
George, Stephan, 258. 
Georgian period, 170. 
Georges Dandirt, 257. 
Getting Married, 192, 196, 200. 
gerettete Venedig, Das, 263. 
Gestern, 262. 
Ghosts, 5, 13, 18, 19, 20, 32, 44, 

45, 173. 
Gilbert, W. S., 168. 
Goethe, 109, 146, 250: 

Faust, 262. 
Goncourt, Edmond de, 35. 
Goncourts, The, 34-35, 46, 104: 

Henriette Marechal, 35. 
Gosson, Stephen: 

School of Abuse, 166. 
Gout du Vice, Le, 66, 70. 
Green Carnation, The, 191. 
Gregory, Lady, 267, 272-273: 

Dervorgilla, 268. 
Griselda, 257. 
Gugeline, 249. 
gute Ruf, Der, 130, 133. 

Halbe, Max, 109, 136-139: 
Die Insel der Seligen, 249. 
Jugend, 135, 136-137. 
Mutter Erde, 137-138. 
Der Strom,, 138^139, 139. 



Das tausendjdhrige Reich, 
138. 
Hamlet, 22, 230. 
Manna Jagert, 135, 149. 
Hannele, 250-251. 
Hannetons, Les, 78, 79. 
Hanska, Mme., 27. 
Harden, Maximilian, 45. 
Hardy, Thomas, 174. 
Hare, John, 183. 
Hartleben, Otto Erich, 135, 
146-149, 159: 
Die Erziehung zur Ehe, 

147-148, 148. 
Hanna Jagert, 135, 149. 
Rosenmontag, 148. 
Harvesters, The, 267. 
Hauptmann, Gerhart, 28, 41, 
46, 109, 110-128, 135, 140, 
141, 154, 159, 174, 175, 
202, 210, 211, 218, 236, 
249, 250-257: 
And Pippa Dances, 257. 
The Beaver Coat, 113, 115, 

123, 126, 135. 
Before Dawn, 110, 113, 125, 

126, 128. 
The Bow of Odysseus, 257. 
Charlemagne's Hostage 1 , 

257. 
The Conflagration, 125, 126. 
Drayman Henschel, 114, 

121, 127, 250. 
Gabriel Schilling's Flight, 

116, 252. 
Griselda, 257. 
Hannele, 250-251. 
Henry of Au'e, 165, 227, 

241, 254-257, 275. 
Lonely Lives, 113, 114, 
115, 117-120, 124, 127, 135, 
252. 



332 



INDEX 



The Maidens of the Mount, 

122. 
Michael Kramer, 113, 114, 
116-117, 125, 127, 226, 
250. 
The Bats, 122-123, 124-125, 

127. 
The Reconciliation, 113, 115, 

121, 126, 135. 
Rose Bernd, 5, 114, 116, 121, 

129, 203, 220, 250. 
The Sunken Bell, 251-254, 

257. 
The Weavers, 22, 45, 114, 
115, 124, 125, 127, 135, 
250. 
Hazlitt, William, 170. 
Heart of Midlothian, The, 

126. 
Hebbel, Friedrich: 

Maria Magdalena, 169. 
Hebraism, 147. 
Hedda Gabler, 15, 19. 
Heimat, 128, 130. 
Hellenism, 147. 
Henriette Marechal, 35. 
Henry of Aue, 165, 227, 241, 

254-257, 275. 
Heritiers Rabourdin, Les, 37. 
Herod, 266. 

Hervieu, Paul, 24, 51, 80-89, 
101, 108, 112, 132, 175: 
Bagatelle, 83, 88-89. 
Connais-toi, 82, 83, 88, 101. 
La Course du Flambeau, 5, 

82, 83, 84-86. 
Le Didale, 77, 84. 
L'finigme, 89. 
Le Loi de I'homme, 86-88. 
Les Paroles res tent, 48, 81, 

84. 
Le Riveil, 82, 83, 88. 



Les Tenailles, 86-88. 
Thiroigne de Miricourt, 
89. 
Heyse, Paul, 247. 
Hichens, Robert: 

The Green Carnation, 191. 
Hirschfeld, Georg, 41, 109, 
136, 141-146, 210: 
Agnes Jordan, 141, 142, 

144-146. 
Der junge Goldner, 141. 
Die Mutter, 141, 143-144. 
Spatfruhling, 141. 
Der Weg zum Licht, 141, 

249. 
Zu Hause, 135, 141, 142- 
143. 
Hochzeit der Sobeide, Die, 

263. 
Hofmannsthal, Hugo von, 222, 
223, 236, 249, 256, 257- 
265: 
Das Bergwerk zu Falun, 

260, 263. 
Elektra, 22, 260, 263, 275. 
Das gerettete Venedig, 263. 
Gestem, 262. 
Die Hochzeit der Sobeide, 

263. 
Der Kaiser und die Hexe, 

260. 
Odipus und die Sphinx, 

260, 263, 264-265. 
Der Tor und der Tod, 226, 

262-263. 
Das weisse Facher, 263. 
Holmsen, Bjarne P., 106. 
Holz, Arno, 105-110, 112, 
114: 
Traumuhis, 141. 
HonnStes Femmes, Les, 41. 
Hovey, Richard, 228. 



INDEX 



333 



Ibsen, Henrik, 7-23, 46, 104, 
107, 111, 117, 118, 121, 
174, 184, 247: 
Brand, 7, 9. 
A Doll's House, 12, 19, 44, 

173. 
Emperor and Galilean, 7. 
An Enemy of the People, 

13. 
Ghosts, 5, 13, 18, 19, 20, 32, 

44, 45, 173. 
Bedda Gabler, 15, 19. 
John Gabriel Borkman, 15- 

16, 18, 19. 
The Lady from the Sea, 14. 
The League of Youth, 8, 9. 
Little Eyolf, 15, 18. 
The Master Builder, 14, 

15. 
Peer Gynt, 7. 
Pillars of Society, 9, 12, 

18, 19. 
Bosmersholm, 13, 14, 19, 

117-120. 
When We Dead Awaken, 8, 
16. 
Ideas of Good and Evil, 268. 
Ideal Husband, An, 190, 191, 

192. 
Iliad] 109. 
Illusion supreme, L 3 , (See 

Pohmes tragiques). 
Importance of Being Earnest, 

The, 192. 
Independent Theatre, 46, 173, 

184. 
Inn of Tranquillity, The, 207- 

208. 
Insel der Seligen, Die, 249. 
Insel, Die (footnote), 248. 
InUrieur, L', 232, 233, 234, 
235. 



Intruse, U, 232, 235. 
InviU e, L' , 60. 
Iris, 186-187, 188. 

Jadis et nagubre, 222. 
James, William, 8: 

The Will to Believe, 227. 
Jeffrey, Francis, 151. 
Jerschke, Otto: 

Traumuhis, 141. 
jeune Belgique, La, 228. 
Jeunes, Les, 64. 
Johannes, 249. 
Johannisfeuer, 131. 
John Gabriel Borkman, 15-16, 

18, 19. 
Jones, Henry Arthur, 132, 
173, 174, 175, 177-182, 
183: 
The Case of Rebellious 

Susan, 178-180. 
Michael and His Lost An- 
gel, 179, 180-182. 
The Renascence of the Eng- 
lish Drama, 177. 
The Triumph of the Philis- 
tines, 178. 
Jonson, Ben, 273. 
Joy, 209. 

Jugend, 135, 136-137. 
Jullien, Jean, 45. 
gunge Goldner, Der, 141. 
Justice, 209, 212, 213-214, 218. 

Kahn, Gustave, 228. 

Kaiser und die Hexe, Der, 

260. 
Keats, John, 258. 
King, The, 23. 
King's Threshold, The, 226, 

271-272, 275. 
Klein, Charles, 176. 



334 



INDEX 



Knoblauch, Edward: 

Milestones, 144. 
Knowles, Sheridan, 170. 
Konigskinder, 249. 
Korrektionsanstalt, 152. 
Kotzebue, A. F. F. von, 128. 



Lady from the Sea, The, 14. 

Lady of Lyons, 169. 

Lady Windermere's Fan, 189, 

192. 
Lamb, Charles (footnote), 190, 
Land of Heart's Desire, The, 

271. 
Lavedan, Henri, 63-70, 90, 
132, 134: 
Catherine, 69. 
Les deux Noblesses, 64, 65- 

66. 
Le Duel, 66, 103, 134. 
Une Famille, 64. 
Le Gout du Vice, 66, 70. 
Les Jeunes, 64. 
Leur Beau Physique, 64. 
Leur Coeur, 64. 
Leur Soeurs, 64. 
Le Lit, 64. 
Les Marionettes, 64. 
Le Marquis de Priola, 66. 
Le nouveau Jeu, 66, 67, 68- 

69. 
Les Petites Visites, 64. 
Le Prince d'Aurec, 48, 64- 

65. 
Sire, 69-70. 
Le vieux Marcheur, 66, 67, 

69. 
Viveurs, 66, 67, 68. 
League of Youth, The, 8, 9. 
Lear, 2, 109, 257. 
Lebendige Stunden, 155, 161. 



Lemaftre, Jules, 90-94, 101, 
108, 112: 

L'Age Difficile, 90, 91, 94. 

Les Contemporains, 90. 

Le D6put6 Leveau, 48, 91. 

Flipote, 91, 94. 

Marriage blanc, 94. 

Bevoltee, 90, 91. 
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 

169. 
Lessing Theatre, 128. 
Letty, 187. 

Leur Beau Physique, 64. 
Leur Coeur, 64. 
Leur Soeurs, 64. 
Liebelei, 156-157, 160-161. 
Lindau, Paul, 103, 175, 177. 
Link, The, 28, 31. 
Lisle, Leconte de, 222: 

Poemes antiques, 222. 

Poemes tragiques, 222. 
Lit, Le, 64. 

Little Dream, The, 209. 
Little Eyolf, 15, 18. 
Loi de Vhomme, Le, 86-SS. 
Lonely Lives, 113, 114, 115, 
117-120, 124, 127, 135, 
252. 
Lover of the Queen of Sheba, 

The, 267. 
Lucian, 201. 
Ludwig, Otto: 

Der Erbforster, 169. 
Lytton, E. G. E. Lytton Bul- 
wer-: 

Lady of Lyons, 169. 

Money, 169. 

Macbeth, 2, 230. 
Madame Bovary, 100-101. 
Madras House, The, 203-205, 
206. 



INDEX 



335 



Maeterlinck, Maurice, 2-22, 
22S-235, 236, 24S: 
Aglavaine et Selysette, 231. 
Alladine et Palomides, 229- 

230, 230-231. 
Ariane et Barbe-bleu, 231. 
Les Aveugles, 232-233, 

234, 235. 
L'lntirieur, 232, 233, 234, 

235. 
L'Intruse, 232, 235. 
Marie Madeleine, 233-234. 
Monna Yanna, 228-220, 

233. 
La Mort de Tintagiles, 230, 

231-232. 
L'Oiseau bleu, 234-235. 
P4lleas et Melisande, 230, 

231. 
Princesse Maleine, 228, 230. 
Les Sept Princesses, 231. 
Soeur Beatrice, 228, 231. 
Magistrate, The, 183. 
Maidens of the Mount, The, 

122. 
Major Barbara, 200. 
Mailarme, Stephane, 222. 
Man- and Superman, 196, 200. 
Mdrchen, Das, 135, 158-159. 
Maria Magdalena, 169. 
Marie Madeleine, 233-234. 
Marquis de Priola, Le, 66. 
Marriage blanc, 94. 
Marionettes, Les, 64. 
Marrying of Anne Leete, The, 

206. 
Mary Stuart, 170. 
Master Builder, The, 14, 

15. 
Maupassant, Guy de, 39: 
Musotte, 39. 
La Paix du Menage, 39. 



Meister Oelze, 135. 

Menaces d' Artistes, 4S, 79, 

Michael and His Lost Angel, 

1T9, 180-1S2. 
Michael Krimer, 113, 114, 

116-117, 125, 127. 

250. 
Michel Pauper, 40. 
Might of Darkness, The, 45. 
Milestones, 144. 
Mill on the Floss, The, 126. 
Milton, John, 243. 
'■Mind the Paint" Girl, The, 

134, 168, 187-188. 
Misanthrope, Le, 22, 257. 
Mist Julia, 2S, 29, 32. 
Mob, The (footnote), 209. 
Moliere, 36, 70, 175, 176, 201, 

240, 257, 273: 
Georges Dandin, 257. 
Le Misanthrope, 22, 257. 
Monna Vanna, 22S-229, 233. 
Moreas, Jean, 228. 
Morituri, 131. 
Mort de Tintagiles, La, 230, 

231-232. 
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 

160. 
Money, 169. 

Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage- 
Patch, 174. 
Musotte, 39. 
Musset, Alfred de: 
Soiree perdue, 33. 
Mutter, Die, 141, 143-144. 
Mutter Erde, 137-138. 



yavette, La, 41. 

New Gar rick Theatre, 183. 

New System, The, 9. 



336 



INDEX 



Newly Married Couple, The, 

23. 
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 247: 
A Iso sprach Zarathustra, 

227, 247. 
Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith, 

The, 185. 
nouveau Jeu, Le, 66, 67, 68- 

69. 
Noyes, Alfred, 266. 

(Edipus the King, 2, 4. 

GEhlenschlager, 7. 

Ode to the Sun (See Chan- 

tecler). 
Odeon, 48. 
Odipus und die Sphinx, 260, 

263, 264-265. 
Oiseau bleu, U, 234-235. 
Othello, 2, 4. 
Otho, 267. 
Otway, Thomas: 

Venice Preserved, 263. 

Paix du Menage, La, 39. 
Pan {footnote), 248. 
Paolo and Francesca, 266. 
Paracelsus, 249. 
Pardon, Le, 91-93. 
Parisienne, La, 40, 43, 173. 
Parnassian school, 222. 
Paroles restent, Les, 48, 81, 

84. 
Passe", Le, 57, 101. 
Peer Gynt, 7. 

PelXeas et Melisande, 230, 231. 
petite Amie, La, 77, 78-79. 
Petites Visites, Les, 64. 
Phillips, Stephen, 266: 

Herod, 266. 

Paolo and Francesca, 266. 

Ulysses, 266. 



Pigeon, The, 75, 209, 215-216, 

218. 
Pillars of Society, 9, 12, 18, 

19. 
Pinero, Sir Arthur Wing, 
10, 112, 134, 173, 174, 182- 
189: 
The Benefit of the Doubt, 

185. 
The Gay Lord Quex, 185. 
Iris, 186-187, 188. 
Letty, 187. 
The Magistrate, 183. 
"Mind the Paint" Girl, The, 

134, 168, 187-188. 
The Notorious Mrs. Ebb- 
smith, 185. 
The Profligate, 183-184, 189. 
The Second Mrs. Tanque- 

ray, 184-185. 
Sweet Lavender, 183. 
The Thunderbolt, 187. 
A Wife Without a Smile, 
187. 
Playboy of the Western 

World, The, 273-274. 
Poemes antiques, 222. 
Poemes tragiques, 222. 
Poppcea, 267. 

Porto-Riche, Georges de, 52- 
57, 95, 101: 
Amoureuse, 48, 54-57. 
Le Chance de Frangoise, 53- 

54. 
Le PassS, 57, 101. 
Theatre d' Amour, 52. 
vieil homme, Le, 57. 
Pragmatism, 197, 276. 
Prince d'Aurec, Le, 48, 64- 

65. 
Princesse lointaine, La, 238- 
239, 241. 



INDEX 



337 



Princesse Maleine, La, 228, 

230. 
Probekandidat, 140-141. 
Profligate, The, 183-184, 189. 
Promise of May, The, 171-172. 



Racine, 225. 

Bats, The, 122-123, 124-125, 
127. 

Reade, Charles, 168. 

Reconciliation, The, 113, 115, 
121, 126, 135. 

Re jane, Mme., 54. 

Remplagantes, Les, 74, 77. 

Renaissance, 233, 248, 249. 

Renascence of the English 
Drama, The, 177. 

Restoration, 166. 

Resultat des Courses, 74. 

Reveil, he, 82, 83, 88. 

Revoltee, 90, 91. 

Rice, Alice Hegan: 
Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage- 
Patch, 174. 

Riders to the Sea, 274. 

Robertson, Thomas William, 
120-121, 168, 169-170: 
Caste, 169-170. 

Robertson, Sir Johnstone 
Forbes (See Forbes- 
Robertson, Sir John- 
stone). 

Rod, Edouard, 221. 

Romanesques, Les, 237-238. 

Romeo and Juliet, 95, 96, 237. 

Rose Bernd, 5, 114, 116, 121, 
129, 203, 220, 250. 

Rosenmontag, 148. 

Rosmer, Ernst: 
Dammerung, 135, 136. 
Konigskinder, 249. 



Rosmersholm, 13, 14, 19, 117- 

120. 
Rostand, Edmond, 236-247, 
256: 
L'Aiglon, 242. 
Chantecler, 227, 236, 242- 

247, 256, 275. 
Cyrano de Bergerac, 236, 

239-242. 
La Princesse lointaine, 238- 

239, 241. 
Les Romanesques, 237-238. 
La Samaritaine, 239. 
Rubens, Peter Paul, 108. 
Ruf des Lebens, Der, 161, 162. 
Rutherford and Son, 175. 

Sagesse, 222. 
Saint Francis, 225. 
Samaritaine, La, 239. 
Sarcey, Francisque, 48. 
Sardou, Victorien, 103, 175. 
Schiller, 107, 169, 247: 

Wallenstein, 2. 
Schlaf, Johannes (See also 
Holz, Arno.), 105-110: 

Meister Oelze, 135. 
Schleier der Beatrice, Der, 

249. 
Schlenther, Paul, 45. 
Schmetterlingsschlacht, Die, 

130-131. 
Schnitzler, Arthur, 109, 135. 
154-163, 175, 218: 

Anatol, 157, 159-160, 202. 

Der einsame Weg, 154, 155, 
161-162. 

FreivMd, 158, 159. 

Die Gefahrtin, 161. 

Lebendige Stunden, 155, 161. 

Liebelei, 156-157, 160-161. 

Das Marchen, 135, 158-159. 



338 



INDEX 



Paracelsus, 249. 

Der Ruf des Lebens, 161, 

162. 
Der Schleier der Beatrice, 

249. 
Das Vermachtnis, 158, 159. 
Das weite Land, 154, 157. 
Zwischenspiel, 155. 
Schoenherr, Karl, 104. 
School of Abuse, 166. 
Scott, Walter: 

The Heart of Midlothian, 
126. 
Science et la Religion, La, 

227. 
Scribe, Eugene, 33, 34, 49, 

103. 
Second Mrs. Tanqueray, The, 

184-185. 
Sept Princesses, Les, 231. 
Shadowy Waters, The, 268. 
Shakespeare, 2, 96, 166, 170, 
171, 175, 176, 257: 
As You Like It, 237. 
Cymbeline, 257. 
Hamlet, 22, 230. 
Lear, 2, 109, 257. 
Macbeth, 2, 230. 
Othello, 2, 4. 
Romeo and Juliet, 95, 96, 

237. 
Troilus and Cressida, 237. 
Shaw, George Bernard, 46, 
70-71, 76, 121, 147, 149, 
182, 184, 191, 192-202, 202, 
211, 218: 
Arms and the Man, 195. 
Candida, 200. 
Getting Married, 192, 196, 

200. 
Major Barbara, 200. 



Man and Superman, 196, 
200. 

The Shewing Up of Blanco 
Posnet, 200. 

Widowers' Houses, 173. 

You Never Can Tell, 200. 
Shelley, Percy Bysshe: 

Cenci, 170. 
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 

166. 
Shewing Up of Blanco Posnet, 

The, 200. 
Short View of the Immorality 
and Profaneness of the 
English Stage, 166. 
Silver Box, The, 209, 212, 218. 
Sire, 69-70. 
Sister Carrie, 174. 
Sklavin, Die, 135. 
Sodoms Ende, 130. 
Soeur Beatrice, 228, 231. 
Soire'e perdue, 33. 
Some Platitudes Concerning 

the Drama, 207-208. 
Sophocles, 175: 

Sophoclean choruses, 264. 
Sowerby, Githa: 

Rutherford and Son, 175. 
Spatfriihling, 141. 
Spencer, Herbert, 8, 197. 
Stein unter Steinen, 133. 
Strandkinder, 133. 
Strife, 5, 209, 210-211, 212, 

213, 214-215, 218, 220. 
Strindberg, August, 27-33: 

Comrades, 28, 29-30, 31. 

Creditors, 28, 29, 31. 

The Father, 28, 29, 32. 

The Link, 28, 31. 

Miss Julia, 28, 29, 32. 
Strom, Der, 138-139, 139. 



INDEX 



339 



Study of Celtic Literature, 

The, 274. 
Sturmgeselle Sokrates, Der, 

132, 133. 
Sudermann, Hermann, 128- 
134, 159, 233: 
Das Blumenboot, 130, 133. 
Die drei Beiherfedern, 249. 
Die Ehre, 128. 
Es lebe das Leben, 129, 130, 

132. 
Der gute Buf, 130, 133. 
Heimat, 128, 130. 
Johannes, 249. 
Johannisfeuer, 131. 
Morituri, 131. 
Die Schmetterlingsschlacht, 

130-131. 
Sodoms Ende, 130. 
Stein unter Steinen, 133. 
Strandkinder, 133. 
Der Sturmgeselle Sokrates, 
132, 133. 
Sunken Bell, The, 251-254, 

257. 
Sweet Lavender, 183. 
Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 
248, 258: 
Mary Stuart, 170. 
Symbolists, 222-225. 
Syinons, Arthur, 267: 

The Dance of the Seven 

Sins, 267. 
Faustus and Helen, 267. 
The Fool of the World, 267. 
The Harvesters, 267. 
The Lover of the Queen of 

Sheba, 267. 
Otho, 267. 
Poppaa, 267. 
Tristan, and Iseult, 267. 



Synge, John Millington, 267, 
273-274: 
The Playboy of the Western 

World, 273-274. 
Biders to the Sea, 274. 
The Tinker's Wedding, 273. 

Talisman, 248. 

tausendjahrige Beich, Das, 
138. 

Taylor, Tom, 168. 

Tenailles, Les, 86-88. 

Tennyson, Lord Alfred, 171- 
172, 266: 
Becket, 171. 

The Promise of May, 171- 
172. 

Terre, La, 221. 

Thackeray, William Make- 
peace, 128. 

Theatre d' Amour, 52. 

ThMtre Libre, 44, 45-46, 47, 
48, 53, 72, 173. 

The" res e Baquin, 37. 

Theroigne de Mericourt, 89. 

Thunderbolt, The, 187. 

Tinker's Wedding, The, 273. 

Tolstoi, Count Leo, 46, 247: 
The Might of Darkness, 
45. 

Tor und der Tod, Der, 226, 
262-263. 

Traumulus, 141. 

T rente ans de Paris (foot- 
note), 38. 

Tristan and Iseult, 267. 

Triumph of the Philistines, 
The, 178. 

Troilus and Cressida, 237. 

Ulysses, 266. 



34° 



INDEX 



Vaudeville, 48. 
Venice Preserved, 263. 
Verein Freie Buhne, 45. 
Verhaeren, fimile, 228. 
Verlaine, Paul„ 74, 222-223, 248 : 

Jadis et naguere, 222. 

Sagesse, 222. 
verlorene Paradis, Das, 135. 
Vermachtnis, Das, 158, 159. 
Victorian age, 170. 
vie litter aire, La, 224-225. 
vieil homme, he, 57. 
Viele-Griffin, Francis, 228. 
vieux Marcheur, he, 66, 67, 69. 
Viveurs, 66, 67, 68. 
Voysey Inheritance, The, 206. 

Waste, 205-206, 206. 
Weavers, The, 22, 45, 114, 115, 

124, 125, 127, 135, 250. 
Wedekind, Frank, 149-153: 
Die Biichse der Pandora, 

150, 153. 
Erdgeist, 153. 
Friihligs Erwachen, 150- 

152, 153. 
Korrektionsanstalt, 152. 
Weg zum Licht, Der, 141, 249. 
weisse Facher, Der, 263. 
weite Land, Das, 154,, 157. 
Wharton, Edith: 

The Custom of the Country, 
174. 
When We Dead Awaken, 8, 16. 
Where There Is Nothing, 270- 

271. 
Widowers' Houses, 173. 
Wife Without a Smile, A, 187. 
Wilbrandt, Adolf, 247. 
Wild Duck, The, 8, 13. 



Wilde, Oscar, 112, 189-192, 

248, 262: 
An Ideal Husband, 190, 191, 

192. 
The Importance of Being 

Earnest, 192. 
Lady Windermere's Fan, 

189, |92. 

A Woman of No Impor- 
tance, 190, 191. 
Wildenbruch, Ernst von, 103. 
Will to Believe, The, 227. 
Wilson, Bishop, 24. 
Winterschlaf, 139-140. 
Wolff, Theodor, 45. 
Woman in White, The, 174. 
Woman of No Importance, A t 

190, 191. 
Wordsworth, William, 151, 246. 

Yeats, William Butler, 222, 

223, 225, 236, 256, 267, 

269-270: 

Countess Cathleen, 268. 

Ideas of Good and Evil, 271. 

The King's Threshold, 226, 

271-272, 274. 
The Land of Heart's De- 
sire, 271. 
■ The Shadowy Waters, 268. 
Where There Is Nothing, 
270-271. 
You Never Can Tell, 200. 

Zola, Emile, 35-37, 46, 104, 
153, 220-247: 

Le Bouton de Rose, 37. 

Les Heritiers Rabourdin, 37. 

La Terre, 221. 

Therbse Baquin, 37. 
Zu Hause, 135, 141, 142-143. 
Zwischenspiel, 155. 















%* %. 



S' 



> 



? ^ 




/ -5 . 









; • 



■\* V ^ 













* & 













'*■ ^ ^ 






' /' 


* cv, 




1 


' ■£* 






<< 


f>' 


1 


' 


1 






















y6 



■0 1 * », 



o5 -V 



^ V* 




<• 






-V. / <s> 



















- 









^,- V* 



<C*" 



v- 






i «*, 



? 






